


Warning Signs

by quicksparrows



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Dark, F/M, M/M, Medical Trauma, Multi, Unhealthy Relationships, medical content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-08-31 02:45:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 73,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8560327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: They would have moved on from Overwatch, if their grief allowed it –– but twice they built it, and twice they let it fall.   A longer work about Soldier: 76, Reaper, and Mercy's history together, set as they cross paths again after the Recall.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I did more planning work on this one than I did on my previous (and nearly finished) long work, Four Hundred Days, but it will be shorter and a lot tighter. 
> 
> I'd like to explore Mercy, Soldier and Reaper in this, with rotating perspectives between them. There are smaller roles for Ana, Widowmaker and Sombra, as well as appearances by others. I like my Soldier as a man trying to let go of the past completely, my Mercy with dark undertones, and my Reaper tragic but already fallen. There will likely be some sex scenes; as I ship the trio in all directions, there will be a bit of everything.
> 
>  **Update, as this work nears completion:** If you're just starting out and want a better idea of what you're in for, this work is not romantic in nature, and can be rather dark at times. Some of the relationships are mutually unhealthy and abusive –– such is the tragedy of writing characters who are terrorists, criminals, and/or members of disgraced peacekeeping organizations charged with human rights violations, as well as characters who have expressed (in canon!) a desire to kill each other. Additionally, if you are particularly sensitive to body horror or medical trauma, this may not be the fic for you, and that's okay. :) We'll romp around with happier things another time.
> 
> Cheers and enjoy. This here is a prologue.

.

 

 

 

The winding halls of United Nations' Swiss HQ would be confusing to anyone on their first day. 

On this very day, Dr. Angela Ziegler passes exactly five people standing underneath wayfinding signage looking hopeless, and two more standing in front of a touchscreen interface meant to map out exact paths to visitor's destinations. Another stands by the elevators, toes turned in as she tries to puzzle out why she must get on an elevator on another floor in order to reach her destination when there are elevators right _here_. 

In her many years stationed here, even before it was repurposed for the Overwatch Initiative, Angela has seen hundreds of people like this, reduced to lost children. People with accolades from renowned institutions, academics with international acclaim in the fields of science, medicine, engineering, intellectuals used to solving world crises in an afternoon –– all of them rendered equal by the HQ's labyrinthine paths. She used to stop and help lost souls when she was an intern at the Klinik Hirslanden, or when her pity outweighed the pressing call of work in her first few years, but today Angela breezes by them all, the heels of her pumps clack-clacking differently over glass walkways, marble tile and concrete steps. 

She often misses the days where she could stop, or where her list of responsibilities was merely a list of patients, but as the head of medical research for the UN's Overwatch Initiative, all she can do is smile sympathetically and hope they find their way. If she stops for even a moment, she will be behind, and applied nanobiology is not a subject that will wait.

Angela swipes herself through security check and makes brief eye-contact with the security guard, who tips his head at her. She breezes through the arch of a metal detector –– a funny name, outdated like _telephone_ or _world wide web_ but still in common parlance –– and she feels the little buzz of the pulse induction beams scanning her for abiotic parts. Hers are cleared by the system, and so she passes the guard with a mere hello.

"Dr. Ziegler?" a voice chimes in over her communicator. It's her head surgical liasion; immaculate timing, as always.

Angela touches a finger to the black stud in her jaw.

"Go ahead, Anaïs," she replies, in Swiss German.

"Five-oh-six-oh-seven is ready for you," her liaison replies. "And the Commander is in the building. You're wanted in a meeting with him; I told him that you're busy, but––"

"I'll handle him when I see him," Angela says. "I'll see _you_ in a moment."

The Commander being here throws a wrench into her day already, but she's not concerned. If the Commander has to wait, then he has to wait. She was hired as head of medical research, not to attend meetings, and sometimes that's the price they have to pay. If he wants to see what she's working on, get another status update, he was welcome to do it last week, when he had initially mentioned it to her. _Something important_ , he'd said.

(Sometimes she misses the simplicity of being head of surgery, the type of job where she can work eighteen hour days, five days a week, always holding either a tablet pen or a laser scalpel. There had been less responsibility, even if she had still held lives in her hands.  

Today, however, is the wrong day to crave simplicity.)

Angela doesn't need to press the button for an elevator; an attendant already has. She watches the numbers tick down on the screen and decides she has enough time to check her messages, so she does. There's a message from a girlfriend about drinks tomorrow that she will inevitably have to decline, and a message in a group chat with her colleagues; someone's posted a cat picture. Angela switches to her email just as the elevator dings.

"Angela," someone else familiar calls, loudly down the hall. She hears boots on the tile, running, and the jostle of people getting out of the caller's way. " _Angela!_ "

Angela pauses, but only long enough to hold the elevator door for the caller. With her other hand, she is already swiping in for priority access to the lab floor. Her caller gets into the elevator by slamming his hand on the closing door and shouldering his way in. He shuffles in next to her when it opens again, and he stands a good six inches taller than her, even when she's in heels. 

"Jesus," he says, exasperated, but he's pleased to see her nonetheless. He folds his arms across his chest. "Couldn't _wait?_ "

She smiles.

"I have a patient waiting for me, Commander Reyes," she says. "I suspect they'd have a harder time understanding the wait than you would."

After all, this patient is currently laid open on an operating table, as they have been for the past sixteen hours, under the hands of her surgeons. It's a new procedure wherein the very cells of the heart are paired with nanites, microscopic machines that pair with the myocardiocytes, lacing with the long chains of sarcomeres in permanent bond. Ten years from now, Angela would like this to be standard procedure, but until those developments have been made, it's hard work today. Each nanite cluster needs to be calibrated, fine-tuned, and so the patient cannot leave the table until that is accomplished. A thousand tiny pacemaker cells.

It is the first of perhaps a hundred more operations. The patient won't be awakened from his coma until all of his procedures are completed –– an estimated three months away from now –– but for now, waiting _is_ waiting.

"You know I flew here from London just to talk to you?" he says. It's almost scorned –– _cute._ He's very American about it, too; she can't think of a single regular colleague of hers who would greet her by barging into an elevator shouting her name, but there's something charming about that, too. Gabriel Reyes carries himself with so much confidence that it's difficult to brush him off as rude.

Angela puts away her phone to look at him properly.

"Last I heard you were supposed to be _based_ here," she says. "Didn't you and Jack make a big deal about being here to entertain me while I work?"

His smile grows wider and wolfish.

"I'm not here _entertaining_ you because I'm too busy flying around the world mopping up after its _problems_ , Dr. Ziegler," he says. He breathes a hard, amused little noise out of his nose. "But you're going to be seeing a lot more of _me_ soon."

"Is that so?" Angela says. She thinks she wouldn't mind that at all; finally get an excuse to pry, see what American enhancement work looks like up close, like they've been teasing her with for years.  

She glances up at the floor indicator –– the little elevator service voice reads off the number, reminds her that she'll need her ID and card key ready. She hears that voice a dozen times a day, five days a week, at very least, and already has her card in hand.

"Yeah," Reyes says. "So you're meeting with me for lunch. Now."

"It's already three, Gabriel," she says. _Americans._

She crinkles her nose at him, and she breezes out of the elevator, swiping her card as she goes. He tries to follow, but he doesn't have the requisite ID for the medical research labs, so he ends up getting caught behind the turnstiles. The acrylic shield is comically narrow against his broad chest; he could muscle in if he chose to, but instead he just wraps a hand over the top edge and _leans_  

" _Lunch_ ," he repeats, seriously. "Finish up what you're doing and meet me downstairs. You _want_ to take this meeting."

She pauses on her side of the turnstile, pocketing her card. One of her resident surgeons opens his mouth to say something, to start bombarding her with status updates, but Angela raises a hand for silence. Her eyes turn back to Reyes, who watches her with dark, serious eyes.

"What is this about?" she asks, finally, more soberly.

"I want you in Overwatch," he says. "In the field."

Angela purses her lips. 

"We'll talk later," she says.

For now, she has a surgery to attend to.

 

* * *

 

 The sun has long set when Angela finally gets out of her lab, and the whole HQ seems hushed and quiet in response. The glass exterior walls of the building reflect the warm lighting lining the halls in a fruitless attempt to beat back the darkness outside. She walks briskly; her adrenaline is still running strong from microscopic surgery that could have put tears in her patient's heart had her technique not been so precise.

It was a success. A few more pages in her reports, another piece of ammo in her push to have the technology approved for broader use. Someday, this will all pay off.

She wonders, idly, how long this meeting will run. Knowing Gabriel, he'll want to go out for drinks after, and he won't want to do it at the in-house pub. He'll want to drive them into Zurich, and that will take an hour. She'd planned to sleep in her office tonight in case she's needed –– she's always needed –– but if she goes into the city, she'll be close to her apartment anyway. Perhaps Gabriel could drive her back again.

When she walks into the meeting room, the lights are dimmed. Commander Reyes sits at the other end of the room, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, the glow of his in-hand communciator spilling over his face.

He looks up at her when she walks in, and he scowls.

"They didn't tell me you'd take five hours in there," he says.

"Surgeons don't do short notice unless you're bleeding profusely, or on the cusp of organ failure," Angela tells him.

"I'll remember that," he says. He laughs, low and disbelieving: "Shoot myself in the goddamn leg just to get your attention!"

"That might get you the attention of one of my residents; my attention requires something more drastic."

"Fine," he grouses. "I'll shoot myself in the _face_. Happy now? Sit down, Doc."

She isn't one of his agents –– that's why she can get away with so much –– but she sits with an obedient smile nonetheless, smoothing her lab coat out under her as she does. He shoves his communicator deep into the pocket of his grey sweatshirt; he is the only military personnel she knows that doesn't wear a suit jacket and pressed trousers outside of the field. Reyes is always ready for a _fight,_ and she suspects he knows this will be one.

"You want me in the field?" she repeats, from earlier. She loves getting down to business just as much as he does.

"I do," he says. "I've already gotten permission from the executive branch, and the paperwork is all prepared and done –– that's how you know I'm serious. All I need is for you to agree, and then you're a member of Overwatch. The real Overwatch, not all this––" he waves a hand around them. "––B-team nonsense."

Angela raises an eyebrow at him.

"Nonsense?" she repeats.

"Angela," he says. "You're brilliant. You deserve to be in the A-league. Leave this to less remarkable people."

"Not a very compelling argument," she tells him. "Anyone can apply my research in the field. No one can replace me here in the lab, and I certainly wouldn't be any use to anyone with a bullet in my head."

His expression darkens. She likes watching him work through how to convince her; she's not easy, but men like Gabriel Reyes act as though they're put-upon by it, scorned by a world that has fallen out of step with their personal march. He is perpetually sour, almost always serious, and yet he has this wonderful tolerance for people who will stand up to him. He's not young and fresh-faced like some other members of his elite team, but Angela gets the impression he will never ever be some grouchy old man with heavily grooved skin, harping on about _back in his day_. There's something perpetual about Reyes, even if she's only known him for a few years. He's as unique as his soldiers, in some sense. 

She gathers that leading Overwatch is difficult for him.

"It's not like that anymore," he says, finally. "Overwatch isn't fighting legions of Omnics, or god programs. We're trying to turn this thing into a legitimate peacekeeping mission, a global authority for _good_. It's still dangerous, but we have _plenty_ of people on the team who can aim a gun. Now we need people who can do _other_ things. We need _medics_ on our level, who can stand beside us rather than behind us."

"I'm perfectly happy where I am," she says.

Who can argue with happy?

Reyes scowls, and he heaves this sigh that seems to collapse him from the shoulders down. He leans against the table, an arm reached towards her, palm open.

"Angela," he says.

"Gabriel," she replies, matching his tone.

"Think of what it could do for your research," he says. "You could be right there, in the thick of things. What better observations for your work than having it right there? You could pilot that first response system yourself."

She frowns. She supposes it's natural for him to know about Project Valkyrie, given his rank, but she wasn't prepared for it to be used against her, as _incentive_ to go.

"It's completely untested in field applications," Angela replies. 

"So test it now," he says.

"Its mobility functions are extremely limited." 

"So what?"

"Overall, it would be irresponsible to put your lives in the hands of an untested advancement."

"Everything we do is irresponsible from a medical standpoint," he argues. "But it'll save lives. You'll save my life and the lives of my people ten times over." 

"My research here could save hundreds of thousands of lives," she says. "Millions."

"Out of a lab? Locked away behind key cards and concrete and marble?"

"My work here will change history."

"God, you're _arrogant_ ," he shoots back, hot, impulsive. It's an old joke between them, but it has a little bite this time.

Angela just smiles, pleasantly as ever. She's never thought of herself as arrogant, but to have one of the world's most decorated soldiers, one who has never seen a mission end as it was _supposed to_ , telling her _she's_ arrogant ––  _well._ It's not without its ironies.

"Gabriel," she says, low and pleasant. "You're not convincing me of anything. I get job offers every day. The rest of them don't ask me to put the rest of my work on the side to play field medic."

Reyes sits back in his seat, slouched low and powerful. For a moment he just stares her down, unblinking, his mouth in a hard line. He can't shout at her or bark orders like he could with his people, nor is there any sort of military imperative for her to agree. For the moment they're at an impasse, two people in a dimmed room in a mostly-empty building.

She reaches out across the table to lay a hand on his. 

"Gabriel," she repeats. "I'm not interested in being in any military."

He rolls something about in his mouth but doesn't say it. 

"But don't think I'm belitting what you do, either," she says. "You are a wonderful Commander and it would be a privilege to support you. I enjoy your company very much! But when it comes to Overwatch, I think I belong with the _Bs_."

She smiles.

"I have no reason to personally be on the front lines."

"How about because you _know_ you could make a bigger difference?" 

That's not Reyes. That's Jack Morrison, from the doorway. He's evidently been listening in for a beat, leaning against the door frame a little bit like a movie star. Angela feels her smile broaden just a touch, and she sits back in her seat to watch him walk across the room to join them.

 "Jack," Reyes warns. "You were supposed to wait downstairs."

"You were taking a while," Jack says. "I figured you could use the support."

Angela watches Reyes' posture shift, his teeth press together. Jack is technically his subordinate, but they have an odd relationship of push-and-pull. Neither care when they step on toes, even on each others'.

Reyes says nothing. Jack says: "Hear us out, Angela."

"I'm listening," she says. She pushes out the chair between her and Reyes, so that they can be a triangle instead of two-on-one. She's sure this does not go unnoticed by Reyes, whose eyes follow her every movement.

"Of course," Jack says, taking his seat. He sits with his knees wide, relaxed as if they were at the bar already. And then, casually: "How was surgery? What was it this time?"

"I was finishing repairs on a man's heart –– a heart that would be considered incompatible with life by all of human history's standards. He will live, and live very well," she says.

"Incredible," Jack says. "Dr. Ziegler, you do incredible things every day."

She knows what he's doing, but he's so genuine about it; it's why they call him golden, why he tempers Reyes so well. Reyes knows what this is, too, and he looks a little pleased about it already. 

"I do," she agrees. 

"See?" Reyes says. "Arrogant."

Jack ignores him. His attention is entirely on her, leaning forward in his seat.

"How long until the average person can get that kind of treatment?" he asks. "My dad, he died of heart failure a few years ago, before you were pioneering these things. It runs in the family. Could I get that surgery ten years from now, if my heart gives out?"

"Perhaps you could, if trials are complete, which could go either way." She pauses. "I'm sorry about your father, Jack."

Jack's smile is genial, understanding. He shifts a little more in his seat, slinging an arm around the back to better turn his body to her. 

"A lot of people could die in ten years," he says.

"Heart conditions are as old as humanity, Jack," she says, smoothly. "They do not demand our attention as outbreaks like polio do. Even if we miss our mark, in the next ten years, we will have made more progress on cardiac medicine than we have in the past thousand."

"What if it could be five?"

"It would be wonderful," she says.

"Two?"

"Unheard of."

"Tomorrow?" he says.

"A miracle," she says. "But not one that will ever happen, Jack. You're not going to change international law or medical study standards by convincing me to join your team. You aren't going to revolutionize the health care system by running secret operatives in all corners of the world."

"Maybe not immediately," Jack agrees. "But don't you think it's a shame that you toil here every week for what, sixty hours? Seventy? And what happens? Who benefits?"

"Right now?" Angela replies. "Whoever they send me. My access beyond that is limited."

"Isn't that _infuriating_?"

She's sure it's meant to get a rise out of her, but she's never known Jack to be malicious. The look on his face, the baby blues of his eyes –– he oozes sincerity, particularly when he looks upset for her. Jack Morrison hates injustice more than anything in the world, and in this moment, it's for _her_.

"Of course," she says.

"Overwatch could be your ticket to getting your work out of here, to where it could be useful. You could test anything and everything. No more six month waits for board approval on things you know will work, no more waiting decades for procedures to be used practically. You'll have in-field proof."

Angela lifts her chin a touch. It's tempting; she could never deny that.

"You know what you do works. You _know_ it," Jack says.

 "I do," she says.

"So why not _prove_ it? Put it into practice? _Start?_ "

Angela pauses.

Why _not_ prove it?

"Like I said," Reyes adds when she pauses, his voice a low rumble. "The paperwork's all done, and everyone on the team wants you. It's all been red-stamp approved –– we're all your guinea pigs."

There's a long pause. Angela rests back in her seat, lets the idea wash over her, wear away at her reasons not to. It's true, after all; how many times has her nanotechnology saved lives — classified lives — within this very building? How many times will they prove themselves, tiny little micro-saviors that they are, before they are allowed to exist beyond the walls of the headquarters?

There's a low temptation there, even as she watches Jack shoot Reyes a look, a _sure_ look, but she cannot succumb to it yet.

"You'll want to weaponize it eventually," she says.

Both Reyes and Jack are silent for a moment, savouring this question: will their militaristic ventures violate her principles, as they have currently violate peace? This is her greatest fear, even as she creates nanites that permit people to defy cellular mortality, even as she operates under the assumption that for much of history, war has been the single driving force behind medical, technical and scientific discovery.

Angela won't be a twenty-first century Joseph-Ignace Guillotin –– of that she is sure, beyond all temptation.

"Overwatch acts outside traditional government bodies," Reyes says. "We're impartial. Its our job to remain that way. No one gets to weaponize it and turn it against another nation, or employ it in wide-scale warfare. It's just us, Angela. We get your work into the open, but it doesn't go anywhere that you don't approve of."

The idea takes a firm hold in her right then, enmeshed in her very being. She looks between the two of them –– Reyes is sitting a little taller, a little prouder. Jack is relaxed but sure.

Angela feels an odd rush of adrenaline unlike surgery. She thinks of herself traveling the world with her work, high on the wings of Overwatch, far beyond these walls. No ID cards. No elevators. No walls, or walkways, or labyrinthine protocols.

Nothing to hamper her.

"Very well," she says. Both of them seem to inhale sharply, reveal a prelimary _joy_ , but she raises a finger and elaborates: "I will do three months with you on trial, beginning after Christmas –– after _thorough_ discussion of what this entails. If what you're proposing holds true, we'll discuss further involvement after that."

"I'll take it," Reyes declares. "I accept."

Reyes smiles, as does Jack, and each of them stick their hands out in turn. Angela shakes, their broad hands enveloping her surgeon's fingers so entirely that they disappear completely. She feels fortified for it.

"Drinks to celebrate?" Jack suggests.

"Drinks," Angela agrees.

They stand to leave.

Exactly thirteen years, six months, eleven days and twenty-seven minutes to this very moment, this room will fly apart. Glass will fall and the concrete will tumble and the great marble tiles will crack and crumble. People will die. In the heat of that moment, Angela will decide that she will never step foot in this building –– or Overwatch –– ever again.

She will be wrong.


	2. The Faint Wraiths of History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela lends her expertise to a crisis in Versailles, but the reception is lukewarm; she is not Mercy anymore, and she's not sure that she could be again. Still, when the recall finally comes, it will demand an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lore dictates Mercy was in the Middle East during recall but I really didn't feel like writing about relief work there for a variety of reasons. I thought I'd instead invoke fictional conflict in a place I've actually been. I also figure Overwatch's canon will eventually joss every word of this, so why not start now. (Fun fact: I wrote this paragraph before they announced that First Strike had been cancelled. I LIVE ANOTHER DAY... in fucking _sadness._ )
> 
> Also, isn't it funny that Versailles in the Overwatch universe has an airport? Like, did they rename Charles de Gaulle?

 

.

 

 

When she had first landed in Versailles, she had almost expected to feel some nostalgia. 

After all, when she had visited as a child with her parents, she had toured the palace with wide-eyed wonder, enraptured by the magnificence and decadence of the long-dead kings and queens who had once inhabited it. She had stood at her parents' sides and marveled at it, convinced them to walk to Grand Trianon and then Petit Trianon just to see it all, even if the walk had taken half an hour. Her father had made a joke about how spoiled Marie Antoinette must have been, to have her own private theater, as if Angela did not have a large computer in her bedroom by eight years old. Her mother had insisted they stop in the gardens for what felt like hours, snapping photographs each blossom on her phone. They'd taken the tram back to the palace, even if it had cost eight euro and Angela would have been just as pleased to walk. Angela thinks she wore jeans, and a pink shirt. The palace had felt warm, the ornate gold decorations basking in the sun.

None of that remains now. Versailles itself still stands, but romance is gone. The once-brilliant gardens between the palace and the Queen's Hamlet are now a sprawl of white tents, personnel and citizens streaming in and out. The numbers have fluxuated as people have been evacuated out of the effected areas of the city and into the camp, or then been evacuated out of the area entirely for long-term lodgings, but at any given time there are thousands forced into the palace for safety. Seeing this, it is difficult to remember that the Versailles she stands is the same Versailles that had gone from a modest tourist locale on the outskirts to Paris to being Paris' sister-metropolis in the course of sixty years, but sometimes terrible things happen. That's just the course of things when there are terrible people in the world.

And who knows? In a decade or two, it may be restored to something akin to its former glory, but Angela knows nothing will bring back the Versailles so many people fondly remember from their childhood, from old movies, from history. It's relegated to their memories now, and any attempt to rebuild will only be a ghost of its former self.

Talon's attack on the city last week will have guaranteed that it will never be the same.

Angela herself has set up in the Hall of Mirrors, as she has been for the past seventy-something hours. She has been working sixteen hour shifts since she landed, each starting at five in the morning, or earlier, if she's been roused for it. There are enough volunteers in this camp that she has mostly only been called for medical concerns –– her intended purpose here, after all –– but on one occasion she has been pulled from bed in order to address a security incident, and another to resolve a conflict between administration and a driver who had been shot at repeatedly on his route. Aside from those incidents, she has spent most of her time in the Hall or in her cot. 

Objectively speaking, Angela has had better days, but that's fine. She wouldn't have it any other way. Much like Versaille, there is no going back.

Right now, the world has been reduced to the man she is healing and the French medical student kneeling at her side. The man is unconscious due to a worsening head injury, and Angela knows without looking at him that he has traumatic brain injury. He had been relatively fine an hour ago, even jovial about his survival of the initial blasts, but that hadn't meant anything once the reduced thought processing kicked in, or the tremors started in his limbs. Once upon a time, a traumatic brain injury could have been survivable in virtually ninety-nine percent of cases, but that was before sanctions took Overwatch away, and all her research with it. 

Angela smooths the man's hair back from his eyes; he does not twitch or give any reaction. The med student exhales deeply, exhausted but not yet defeated.

"Do we just… stay with him?" the student asks.

"Yes," Angela says. "Even if there are others who need us, it is not fair to pass from life alone."

There's a long silence between them.

"What drives someone like you to work here, Dr. Ziegler?" 

It's a question made in good faith, but it gives Angela pause anyway.

"How far are you in your studies, Camille?" Angela asks in turn.

"I just began second year," Camille says.

"Ah," Angela replies. "So you have many years to go! It is so much longer than the Swiss system."

It feels trite to talk about such things, but Angela does anyway.

"Eight more years, if all of France is not levelled in the meantime," Camille says, quietly. She brushes her hair back behind her ears, where it has fallen out of her ponytail. "I thought I would be spending my civil service changing diapers in a senior's home, not seeing my country turned into a warzone."

"The fighting will pass," Angela says, to be comforting, but she has said this many times over the years, and the fighting always returns. 

There's a silence between them as Angela ponders the conflict she has witnessed in the past few days alone, and Camille thinks of god knows what. The patient under their hands is no longer breathing, and there is no motion behind his eyes when Angela tests them for sensitivity.

He is dead.

Once more, Angela feels the cold sweep of failure, so she sits up on her heels and glances around the hall to distract herself. The eponymous mirrors are all cracked, and some are shattered entirely, the glass long swept away. The arcaded windows have largely survived, but only with bracing installed across them. Mercantilism had once prompted Louis XIV's Minister of Finance to seduce glass production away from Venice and to the local artisans, and to fate's credit, those same artisans survive today as a multinational corporation. Angela supposes the glass could still be replaced by their original makers someday, if Versailles still stands when this is over. Assuming the company still does, too.

Camille shifts beside her. She is looking around at the room, too. The missing chandeliers afford a much better look at the ceiling decorations, and they are sitting below the central panel, _Le roi gouverne par lui-même_. It is very beautiful, despite its age, and strife has not touched it at all.

"Did you ever visit this place when you were a girl?" Angela asks.

Camille shakes her head.

"I did," Angela continues. "It's sad to see how much has changed."

"I wish I had seen it," Camille says. "I wish I'd gotten to see a lot of places before they were destroyed by war."

"Such as?"

"The Hagia Sofia," Camille says. "My family is from _Istamboul_ ; my father saw them tear down the Omnium from within it, saw the nave collapse. I love old pictures of it. I read that the dome was made in a way that made it look like it was hovering, because it had windows at the bottom –– pictures never make it look that way, though. I think I would have had to see it in person."

Angela remembers how it looked. Securing it had been one of her first missions as a fully-fledged member of Overwatch, and she'd stood at the top of that dome with her heart in her chest, watching her teammates down below move in and out of her line of sight, waiting for the moment where she'd need to swoop down and rescue them.

 _Don't move until it's necessary,_ the Commander had told her. _You light up like a damn Christmas tree, everyone is going to see you. Stay hidden._

That's a thought that nettles her.

"Fortunately there are still more beautiful places in the world," Angela says. "You will visit them someday."

Camille frowns.

"But what drives you to be here?" Camille says. "We study your breakthroughs in the classroom, the impact you had on medicine –– you used to use technology that could have saved this man's life in a blink. How can you bear this work?"

Angela could laugh at the way the girl puts to words the question she has been haunted by for years, but she chooses not to think about it now.

"Camille," she says, "Please complete the documentation for this patient, and see that he is moved to the morgue."

Camille hesitates, but she rises to her feet.

"Yes, _docteur_ ," she says, and off she goes.

Angela looks down at her patient with a sinking feeling in her heart.

There is so much work to be done, and so much weight on her soul.

 

* * *

 

Angela spends her scarce time in the evening picking at dinner, most of which is condemned to be pushed around on her tray, uneaten. The mess hall, formerly a chapel where the _fils de France_ were made dauphins, is full and busy, but Angela sits in the balcony alone. The tribune royale is quieter, despite the sound floating up from below. It's a scrap of much-needed peace.

Still, she picks at the conversations below she same she does at food. Much of it is about work, complaints here or there about the conditions, worries about the future. Someone is talking about their favourite movie with a passion ill-fitting their current world. Someone suggests, for the millionth time, that strained relationships with Omnics are "the problem." Another is tearily wondering why the world has to be this way. A few American relief workers talk about sports in English. Someone reads off a news bulletin from the UN; Talon has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Someone says: "Everyone knows she only works here because no one else will––"

That's enough for one day.

She drops her tray off in the wash bins at the bottom of the stairs and heads out into the courtyard for a quick breath of fresh air. The blocky black-and-white marble floor feels less disorienting at night than it does during the day; under the sun, it makes one feel like a plaything in a toy castle. For a moment she just stands there, unsure of where to go; a few armed soldiers say hello to her as they pass by, but she just smiles as graciously as she can and goes back inside. 

It's been a long time since she was in an active crisis. It's a been a while since she saw so much death.

Ever since the collapse of her old professional life, she has made a point to take on stable projects, as far from war as she can. Long-term ones she can really sink her teeth into, ease down into and get to know. Before this, she had been working on a cholera epidemic. These epidemics might last the better part of a year or two, and there is always copious tension and stress in containing it so that it does not become a pandemic, but still, the dynamic of a team doing long-term work is somewhat different from an active crisis –– the tension and stress itself is different. 

In many ways, she had loathed the culture behind adventure-work. Adrenaline is fine here or there, but the sort of people attracted to that lifestyle had been addicts. Incredible people, and by all accounts the very people you would want at your side amongst chaos, the people you'd want watching out for you when your back hit the wall, but _intense_ people. Sometimes _dangerous_ people. They could never return to normal jobs or normal lives or even normal sleeping schedules. They'd get a contact thrill off of war and suffering and never quite leave the battlefield again. Type-A personalities, grinding themselves down to the bone with alcohol and cigarettes as lubricant, plagued with health issues, but they'd never change. They'd still be the first to have their boots on the ground after an emergency call.

(In the midst of this thought, Angela reminds herself that in a way, she wasn't much different, but at least she'd adapted. _Assessed._ )

For a time, Angela had forgotten about those kinds of people, too busy vaccinating children and bringing medical services to isolated communities. Here, in Versailles after a bombing, with suspects still at large and the whole city crawling with soldiers and survivors in relative mayhem, she remembers why she put warzones behind her.

But work is work, and Angela follows through on her commitments. There are people that need tending to, lest death claim them too.

She cuts through the gardens to get back to her station faster. But as she steps into the gardens, she sees a man at the other end, back to her, dressed in a hooded black coat. His shoulders are broad, his hands deep in his pockets.

She stops in her tracks.

"Hello?" she calls, her heart in her throat.

The man turns, and when he sees her, he looks palpably relieved. Angela breathes a sigh as he jogs towards her. It's only Dr. Lucas.

"Jesus," he says. "I've been looking for you everywhere. You look like you've seen a ghost."

"You startled me," she says. Up close, the coat is nothing more than a hooded sweatshirt. She scolds him, gently: "You're going to get shot, standing out in the gardens in a hood like that."

Lucas doesn't seem to care.

"You know, you left your pager in your bunk and it has been going off non-stop today," Lucas says to her, frustration heavy in his voice. The forty-three year old resident surgeon is prone to these kinds of tantrums, generally satisfied with being the sort of person who yells at his colleagues daily. He continues: "I can't sleep with it beeping constantly."

"What do you mean? I don't have a pager, just this," she replies, gesturing at her jaw, where the black stud remains, as it always has. Decades after she installed it, built-in communicators are still rare enough that the common man forgets them.

"Not that one," he says. " _This_ one, whatever it is."

She knows what one he means immediately, even before he unpockets a hand to offer her something. The offending _thing_ is there in his palm, a sleek piece of screenless black plastic with a glowing orange indicator. It still beeps periodically, and given her proximity to it, she starts feeling the beep in her head rather than out loud when it senses her presence. 

"Finally," he says, relieved.

Just looking at it she imagines the radiotransmitter inside, lit up with a unique channel access protocol code, beamed across the planet from its master transmitter. It's a tiny little protest in the night. If it's going off, it's serious.

Angela is frozen for a moment, looking at it. She watches the orange light cycle on, off, on, off. Orange. In some strange act of grief, she hasn't even _worn_ that colour in years –– the same years she has also contemplated getting rid of this pager, in fear of this very moment.

"You went through my things to retrieve this," she says, polite but clipped.

"It wouldn't stop beeping –– until I brought it to you, anyway," Lucas says, "and I was _trying_ to sleep."

The beeping in her head is persistent. Angela exhales and feels all her breath leave her at once, rendering her utterly spent. She holds the pager in her palm like it is a mouse, or a spider, or some other pitiable little creature. Lucas watches her for a moment, annoyed and sour and over-spent.

"Just put it back," Angela says, holding it out to him. "I will deal with it later."

"Not if it's going to keep _beeping,_ " he says. He doesn't take it, so she takes his hand to place it there.

"Just don't go through my things again and it's fine, Lucas," Angela replies,  walking away from him, but he follows. The gravel strewn across the garden crunches under her boots. She decides she just wants to get back to work, to bury herself in her life.

"Why don't you just turn it off?"

"I can't," she says, which is a lie. She can answer it, but she doesn't want to.

He heaves a sigh.

"What the fuck kind of–– _well,_ if it's going to keep beeping, why don't you just keep it on _you_?" Lucas gripes. He hands it back to her, and she takes it almost robotically, entirely out of instinct, though she wishes she hadn't.

"It will disturb our patients," Angela says.

"It's disturbing _me!_ " he insists.

Angela can't disagree. It's disturbing her too –– but she keeps it.

 

* * *

 

The palace is not very conduicive to privacy, Angela has found. The rooms of the chateau are all aligned along the outer walls for better lighting, and so each room has multiple doors to connect them end to end. She streams through one after another, nudging her way around cots and supply shelves and mess tables and coworkers. While on one hand she expects little priority for privacy in a bustling  camp, she finds herself dismayed when the need inevitably arrives.

A few people look at her as she passes through, but she ignores them. The pager is hot in her hand, the little light burning insistently against her palm.

She eventually finds herself a more or less empty room with a single door, and she switches on the lamp inside. The room must have been a walk-in closet once upon a time –– much too small for Marie Antoinette's hundreds of dresses, but maybe it housed some smaller luxuries, given the white wood paneling and patterned marble tile. There's a glossy bench stained dark red, and so Angela sits on it, nestled between two precarious shelves of supplies. Five minutes of privacy, she decides, to sort this out.

Angela inhales deeply, and then dares herself to open her palm to look at the pager again.

It looks the same as it did when Lucas first handed it to her, but she half expected it to have grown larger, more insistent. She lets herself scruntinize it for a moment, waiting for something to change, but it keeps beeping out insistently.

She's not sure what to do with it. It's been dormant for years, almost a decade –  part of her had kept it if only to be reassured that it would stay that way, even if it was a constant reminder of the past.

Angela closes her fingers around it again, and she feels a knot at the base of her throat.

She has work to do, she reminds herself, and yet she is crouched in a closet. That won't do –– but she also can't go out again so soon without having at least considered it.

She lets the thought surface, lets herself really recognize it:

_Overwatch is in recall._

She taps her fingers on the top of the bench; it is hollow, and the sound reverberates under her fingertips. _Tap, tap, tap._ The little light keeps going: blink, blink, blink. It keeps wirelessly relaying the sound into her communicator, which buzzes in her face: _beep, beep, beep._ She would surely have a headache by now, if the nanomachines installed in the blood vessels at the base of her skull weren't efficiently regulating for pressure.

She puts her thumb over the Overwatch logo so she doesn't have to look at it, and she feels the contents of her stomach churn a little. She even looks up at the room, at what she can see of it beyond the storage crates, and she thinks that maybe Marie Antoinette and King Louis XIV huddled in this very room while their angry subjects battered down the door, unsure of how to face their world again. It's so strange –– she never thought this day would come, but here it is:

_Overwatch is in recall._

Angela isn't sure what to do. Maybe she should message someone. She doesn't. Even if they're still all in her address book, she doesn't even know if their contact information has changed over the past years.

The door opens abruptly. A woman stands there with a carefully ruled expression. That's Mme. Baudin, one of the communications liaisons.

"Dr. Ziegler," she says. On a normal day, Angela would scarcely hear from her, and so her presence is all the more alarming: "We're on high alert. There was an incident in the Gabriel wing, and the interloper got away."

Angela has never felt so blessed to have an emergency situation.

"I didn't hear the alarms."

"They got in without triggering any of the security measures, so we're locking down quietly. A security guard saw something move and called it out. Whoever it was, they immediately vanished –– just vanished."

"Everyone on high alert, then," Angela says. "We'll address it now."

Baudin nods and then pauses.

"Uh," Baudin trails. "You realize where you were sitting, right?"

"What?" Angela says. She looks back at the bench, and then, realizing the lifting lid, she laughs. "This is the finest bathroom I've ever hid in to think. My apologies to Marie."

Baudin smiles. She doesn't ask why Angela was hiding, and that's just fine by her. The two of them move swiftly down the hall, streaming past people being shepherded into rooms.

"Well," Baudin says. "Will you go with the doctors, or…?"

"I'll go with the soldiers," Angela volunteers. "Someone needs to be looking out for them if things get ugly."

"Noted," Baudin says. "I'll let them know; you get ready."

Angela nods and moves past her at a brisk pace. She spies Camille up the hall and raises a hand to flag her down.

"Camille," Angela calls. "I require your assistance getting suited up."

Camille's round face lights up.

"Mercy?" she says, and Angela almost flinches; instead, she just quietly firms her resolve.

"Just Dr. Ziegler," Angela corrects her, gesturing for the girl to follow and heading down the hall. "Mercy has long retired."

But Mercy, it seems, has new plans.

 

* * *

 

What's left of Mercy travels with Angela, just as the old beacon does. And, truth be told, there really isn't much left of the Valkyrie system. It used to take two Overwatch personnel to maintain her suit, and at least one to assist in putting it on; now, it is little more than a tactical suit, a breastplate, a neck brace and shin guards. If that's Mercy, it's a stripped down version. Sad, but it gets the job done with just a medical kit belted at her waist and a sidearm in a holster.

Still, Camille looks at each piece as it goes on like it's a thing of dreams, or the lovely pictures that captured the imagination and wonder of the Overwatch Generation. Camille would have only been a girl, but she seems to remember just fine.

"May I ask why you don't have the wings?" Camille asks.

"I don't have them anymore," Angela replies. 

"Why not?"

Camille's fingers are nimble on the plates, connecting the shoulder pieces. Angela triggers the lock biotically and the powerful electromagnets seal the armor together at the seam. 

"They were programmed to the biotic signatures of my former colleagues," she replies. "Without them, they're just dead weight."

"Oh." Camille pauses. "Why don't you just make fly to anyone?"

"Flight is complicated. In crowded situations, the systems could be overwhelmed, or even fail, and then I could put myself in danger," Angela replies. "My colleagues were trained in combat positioning –– they knew how to move to get me where I needed to go in a hurry."

"I saw on TV once," Camille says. "You pivoted mid-fight, too. It was the most graceful thing I've ever seen."

Angela doesn't say anything.

"I wish I could have seen them in person."

Angela just hums her acknowledgement and turns her attention to buckling her holster on her hip. Her blaster rests heavily in it, a clunky thing with a thick hand plate.

The first time she had gone into the field without her wings, she had felt as though a weight had been stolen from her –– without the wings, she didn't need her hip fans, either, or any of the counterbalancing on her waist. She hadn't needed all the mechanisms worked into the breastplate, or the headpiece with its radio signals and hardware. She'd felt extraordinarily naked without them, just leggings and tunic and a plain white medic's breastplate. She'd felt vulnerable. 

Now she just feels like she deserves to feel that loss, like she does every time she puts on the Valkyrie system. She could have turned over her life's work to UN custody, or gone to prison for the rest of her life, or faced public ridicule, but instead she got to sign peace bonds that she would never engage with research again.

Losing her wings and her staff was the price she'd paid for everything she had done, and all things considered with the rest of Overwatch, it had been small. She's fortunate she still gets to practice medicine at all. What swerving could she ask of justice?

Still –– loss is loss.

Angela does up the last clasp herself.

"Well done," Angela says, finally. "Thank you. I'll escort you to the safe room and be off, then."

She takes off at a brisk pace, beckoning for Camille to follow. They move swiftly through the halls, Angela pulling on her gloves as she walks, and when they arrive at the door to a safe room, Baudin opens it to usher Camille in. Baudin frowns and for a split second Angela and Baudin regard each other with something like tension; Angela watches the other woman's eyes drift down and then sharply back up again. Angela just stands there in the doorway, looking at the faces inside peering back at her like owls in a burrow. It is dark in the hall, but the light inside is warm.

"Take care," Baudin says, seriously. "Don't play hero."

"Those days are long behind me," Angela replies. She taps her communicator. "I'll alert you if I find any trouble."

"Of course," Baudin replies, and she closes the door.

 

* * *

 

The lock-down has done well to put people in order. Everywhere she looks, it's rank and file.

The head of security is a tall man with dark hair and a scowl. His name is Murat. Angela had been introduced to him on her first day in this camp and she'd seen little of him since. Now he looks her up and down with something like disdain.

"We don't really need a medic out here right now. If we do, there's a whole fleet inside."

"I have more experience with Talon than anyone else on this mission," she says, bluntly. 

"Maybe a decade ago, you did," Murat says, just as blunt, but with several inches on her. "But you're a liability now. You've been out of action for some time."

She'd come to understand her position in this camp was not a welcome one, but this makes it clear as day. Still, she lifts her chin and stands tall.

"So I have been," she says. "But that does not mean you have the luxury of turning down my services tonight."

The lines of Murat's face deepen.

With Overwatch in the back of her mind, it is difficult to forget how this moment might have felt if she were standing under Morrison or Reyes' shadows. They'd had different ways of doing things overall, but neither of them were like this commander.

"Just stick to the inside, Mercy."

He turns and leaves.

 _Mercy._ Angela feels so dismissed by the conversation that she stands there for a moment longer like she's in a fog. But off she goes, alone, to patrol the building. It seems better than going back to the locked down areas.

Her path takes her through the building again, now pleasantly quiet. Cots up against the walls have been vacated, its occupants sheltered from the towering windows. Outside, she can see soldiers running sweeps, guns out. Their blue helmets stand out in the dark, almost as if floating; if there are Talon agents afoot, then they're certainly invisible in their black outfits.

She laps the building twice in relative silence, listening to the updates over her communicator and passing the occasional member of security. By time she makes it around to the Hall of Mirrors again, where she had started her day, there's been no more sign of anything, and she's feeling the consequence of being picky with her dinner.

With a long sigh, Angela decides to take a break. After a moment of thought, she spies a stool up against the mirrors; the cushion is stained and the ornate woodwork on the legs is chipped, but she drags it over to the window anyway to watch outside. There's something sad about sitting surrounded by the beautiful old goldwork and the hundreds of mirror panels, neglected by time and powerless to return to its former glory. Angela has the funny thought of how beautiful her wings would look in this place, yellow beams of light illuminating all the gold, but she pushes it down.

She realizes the beacon is still going off in her head, having been tuned out until this moment of silence. She listens to it for a moment, and she finally takes the beacon out of her pouch. It's still flashing, tireless.

She wonders, half-heartedly, how many have already answered the call. How many will. And what will the others do? Never answer? Crush the little thing so it can't beep any longer, fall off the grid forever?

Realistically, she can't answer this call. Not after everything that's happened, not after what she's done. She'd be violating UN sanctions. It would all be over, and maybe she would not get off lightly this time.

Angela turns her eyes up to _Le roi gouverne par lui-même_ again. Louis XIV sits as the center of the universe, surrounded by the gods, all of creation granting him wisdom, virtue and immortality. The gods are bathed in yellow, their heads illuminated by invisible halos. There's glory in such a triumph in art surviving so many hundreds of years, or at least there could be –– a man had died under this canvas today, and no one could prevent it.

And then she sees something.

Nestled in the goldwork, in the crux of some crown moulding, is a device with a center portal, stuck to the ceiling on three spires. It lights up periodically, a dim purple.

Angela slowly stands up and approaches it. Gazing up at it, she touches a finger to her communicator.

"All units please be advised," she says. "I have identified a translocator in the Hall of Mirrors. The suspect is still in the building."

There's a pause, the beeping continuing behind her eyes, and then comes the response: "Noted, Mercy. Agents rallying to you immediately."

Angela feels a split second of triumph, of sheer confidence, and she replies: "Yes, commander."

She hears rapid footfalls behind her and turns.

"That was–"

Her own voice dies. There's no one there. For a moment Angela is frozen, listening. Footsteps. She hears _footsteps,_ echoing off the grand ceilings, as quick as a run. Angela breathes in sharply and unholsters her sidearm, moving backwards as she does to keep ground. She _sees_ something. It's only for a split second, that ripple in her line of sight, but Angela fires low once, and then twice.

She makes her mark.

A woman flickers into view, careening purple light that crashes to a knee some feet from where she started. She immediately moves to get up, to hobble if she can, but the wound in her leg seizes her thigh, and she stumbles, her forearms momentarily against the floor before she tries again. The woman grabs at her fallen automatic pistol, other hand clutching her leg.

Angela moves closer, lining up the barrel of her gun with the woman's head.

"Don't move," she says.

The woman stays still for a beat, breathing heavily. Working through the pain. Her leggings are stained vivid red already, dripping down her leg, and Angela feels a pang of sympathy. A desire for mercy. The woman _laughs._

"I don't think you'd _actually_ do it," the woman says. Her eyes are vivid and angry, but her mouth is curved into a challenging smile, even as she takes up her gun again to aim. Angela _lets_ her, even as she gestures with it at Angela's breastplate, at the red cross over her heart. "Who are you kidding, _güera_? Medics don't kill."

Angela has never met this woman, and yet a name floats to her lips.

"You must be Sombra," she says. True, she has never been fond of force, and knowing who she stands over, she has no interest in being someone she isn't. "You're quick. And worse, you're injured –– why don't you stand down? I'll look after you, keep you safe."

Sombra's eyebrows rise and then fall, comedically fast. Even when downed, she's candid. A little bit like Lena.

"He told you about me, huh?" she says.

She notes the woman's beltline; there is one translocator there, minimized, but there are empty clips for two more. One is still in the ceiling. That means there's another _elsewhere_. Angela nods, just once.

"That's not very fair," Sombra says, scoffing. Her hand is still clutched tightly on the grip of her gun. "He doesn't talk about you at all."

"Well, if you want to level the playing field, _I'll_ tell you about me," Angela says, and then she asks again: "Why don't you stand down?"

Angela would sooner take a spray of bullets from that machine pistol than say she didn't offer peace at least twice.

Sombra closes her eyes and smiles, hand still tight over her thigh. For a moment Angela thinks she might stand down, but she knows better; Agents of Talon aren't chosen for their susceptibility to mild persuasion. Sombra does not surprise her when she keeps the gun tightly in-hand, squarely aimed.

"I'll just wear him down," she says. "He's fun to tease. Until then––"

Sombra raises a finger with a smile.

That is the precise moment where Angela hears sniper fire, a split second before the window breaks.

And then she's hit.

 

.


	3. God Complex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It isn't a popular course of action, especially after another failed mission, but Reaper makes sure their paths cross now and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Yeah, I'll update once a month or so."  
> \- famous last words of the person recovering from elbow surgery that puts literally every other hobby she has on hold.
> 
> Also, 11 years of education in French led me to this moment. It's not my finest.

 

.

 

 

 

Reaper is livid.

This isn't any surprise to Widowmaker, who leans out of his space as soon as he leans in, but still he bears over her with tense shoulders and a fist wound around the stock of her sniper rifle, pointing it upwards. Her grip on the gun remains tight, but she allows him to bully her down.

"I told you _not_ to shoot her," he says, deadly low, face to face.

Widowmaker looks at him, imperceptible; she only sees his mask and he only sees the firm set of her jaw and her glowing red scopes. 

"Touchy," Widowmaker says. 

"We are here to secure the weapon! _That's_ the directive!"

"Eliminating former Overwatch agents is always a second directive," she says. "You should be celebrating this after you failed in Gibraltar. And keep your voice down."

He deflates with a long hiss, a noise of frustration. It would be pointless to tell her otherwise; she is, after all, programmatically inclined to these things. Talon could order her to pirouette after each kill, and she would do it until the end of time with swift, silent obedience. Of course she'd take the shot.

Reaper crosses the makeshift watch tower, footfall heavy with anger when he's not treading on the corpses of the soldiers that had been stationed there until a few minutes ago. It's not very wide, so within five steps he's leaning over the railing to peer across the sea of white tent-tops to the Hall of Mirrors.

He can't see Mercy anymore, nor Sombra, but that's because they've both fallen out of sight.

_Fuck._

"We need to move," Widowmaker says. "We can assume Sombra has failed."

"That's the last time we bring her on a low-tech mission," Reaper replies. "Let's meet her at the checkpoint."

Widowmaker doesn't reply, so he turns to glance at her only to find she's slipped off already, zipped down from the watchtower on a line and her spindly legs. She runs through the darkness, and Reaper growls to himself before taking off after her in gusty, billowing smoke.

 

* * *

 

 

Sombra has already translocated back to the checkpoint by time they get there, cursing to herself in Spanish as she collapses the translocator and slaps it back onto her belt. She's sitting against the wall, her left leg sticking out and oozing blood. 

"I can't believe you got shot by a _medic_ ," Reaper says, and she looks up at him with narrowed eyes.

"That gun does a surprising amount of damage!" Sombra protests, as if that excuses the stupidity of being _shot_ by a _medic._

Reaper crouches at her side, elbows on his knees, just so he's on par with her. She pokes at the wound with one long, manicured fingernail. The bullet has fractured some of the filaments in her leggings, so there's a great ugly blue streak running top to bottom, like a run in a pair of tights. Sombra grimaces as she pries the fabric and fiber wetly away from her skin, and Reaper peers a little closer. It's not that bad.

It's almost _funny_.

"You're griping about _this?"_

"Hey," Sombra replies, holding up a finger in his face. It has blood on it. " _Hey!_ Shut the _fuck_ up."

Reaper chuckles anyway, even as he fishes around in his belt pouches and hands her an autoinjector of blue solution. Sombra snatches it away from him, uncaps it and stabs herself in the thigh with the prong. He watches her jaw tense briefly as she does it. She'd described it as about the same as a getting subdermal implants, once; it was a _worthwhile_ sting. He wouldn't know –– he never enjoyed that shit.

"Is the whole thing over, then?" Sombra asks.

"No," Widowmaker interjects, curtly. "The other teams are still on track for their part. They will see it through to the end. You, however, have lost us ours."

"Excuse me?" Sombra snaps. Reaper watches the hackles rise and he just chooses to stay crouched where he is, disengaged. "If I could have done it from the outside –– _like usual!_ –– it would have been cracked in like _half_ a second."

"You were arrogant," Widow replies, each word staccato, sharper than the last.

Sombra continues: "Do you know how _hard_ it is to hack a _five hundred year old_ museum? Fucking French government puts a high security vault under a fucking museum, you don't have any lines _in._ "

"All you had to do was get close." 

"How the fuck am I supposed to get _close_ , eh?" Sombra replies. "I can't stay in camo long enough to get by _everyone_."

" _Shut up_ , both of you," Reaper interjects. "Or I'll make your legs match. Widow, call in and update them."

Sombra rolls her eyes again before muttering under her breath in Spanish, _culero_ this and _te crees muy muy_ that. Reaper chooses to ignore it, partially because he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, but mostly because she has no idea that he _knows_ what she's saying. The less she knows about him, the better. She acts like a fucking _teenager_ sometimes, but he should have expected that; he's decades older than her and not touched in the head. 

Not the way she is, anyhow.

Even so, he's had enough of this shit already; they don't normally argue but then again they don't normally fail missions for stupid reasons. Getting shot in the leg by a medic, whether it's because your thermoptic camoflague wore off or because you were too loud or because you're just plain _arrogant_ , that is not a valid fucking reason to fail a mission.

(Getting your clock cleaned by a fucking monkey, now _that's_ a valid reason to fail a mission.)

"Calling in," Widowmaker says. And then off she prattles in French, which Reaper tunes out. 

He stands up and paces. The wood floor creaks under his boots, protesting his anger. Widowmaker leans back against a table's edge, mouth in a hard line as she listens to response, her scope's many eyes glittering red atop her head. Sombra picks fussily at her leggings.

"Hey," he says.

Sombra looks up at him. _What do you want?_

"What happened to Mercy?"

Sombra gives him an extraordinarily deadpan look.

"I dunno, I said _see ya_ when she got hit," she says. And then, with a lifted chin: "Hey, were you telling her shit about me? We're gonna have problems if that's the case."

Behind his mask, Reaper narrows his eyes –– it's an instinct, a human reflex, but it's meaningless. Sombra's staring him down anyway, gazing into the skull that makes up his face as if she might be able to suss out an answer from it.

"She knows who I work with," he says, finally.

"Is that how she knew to fucking _shoot_ me?"

"No," he says. "She knew to shoot you because she's not an idiot."

She shakes her head at him, slow and disbelieving. Her lip curls into a sneer, and it just goes on and on, even if he doesn't say anything. Finally, she says: "We're having problems, for sure."

"Relax," he says. "She doesn't know anything useful."

"Yeah? Well, see if I ever tell you anything again," Sombra replies. "Not that it matters. Given she's probably dead and all."

The anger in his gut, simmering this whole time, boils over suddenly, startlingly –– he slams a fist into the wall, and the stone gives him all the resistance in the world.

"Go on and be pissed about it," Sombra says, rolling her eyes to Widowmaker, who is frowning at the outburst. "You're always pissed about everything."

So he is, but he's earned it.

" _Bien reçu_ ," Widowmaker says; Reaper knows communication terms in most languages, at least, so his attention pricks to her. " _Terminé_."

Reaper looks to her for an update. Widowmaker looks as passive as ever, blinking slowly at him as she waits for him to ask for it. 

"What's going on?" he asks.

"We're to pull out at dawn; it's over," she says.

"Thank God," Sombra says. "I can't wait to get back to civilization."

"Fine," Reaper confirms.

Widowmaker is still looking at him. She frowns, and if she didn't look dead in the eyes, it would almost look like bitterness. She's too refined to _sulk._

"What?"

"She lived," Widowmaker says. And then, coolly: "I hope it left a mark."

Sombra curses. Reaper just breathes a sigh, venting loudly through the gaps of his mask.

 

* * *

 

Reaper doesn't particularly care about Talon.

He used to think that joining an organization was some sort of honourable commitment, but these days he knows that was military thinking. The army doesn't allow careers for people who think they know everything, and recruits who sit around contemplating free will in an environment where command is everything wash out every day. The Soldier Enhancement Program had been that way too, in its most distilled form –– you had to obediently allow what amounted to human experimentation with all its ups and downs, without any complaint, and he'd excelled. The initial run with Overwatch had relaxed him somewhat, teased out a comraderie in him that he'd never felt before, but it had still been something he would have died for in a heartbeat, and his people were good back then, ready to die under his command. And Blackwatch –– oh, god, he'd put people through the _ringer_ with Blackwatch, and complainers had been fed to the _wolves_.

Talon, though.

Fuck Talon.

Talon is a means to an end, a way to occupy himself. It's a boarding school for misfit ex-heroes, abberances of nature who can't settle down in a civilian life. It's a mission for people like Widowmaker, and others who can't walk into a supermarket without making little children cry.

If there's any reason Reaper is with Talon, it's because it gives him the means to do something for himself. It gives him intel, and transport, and ammunition. If he didn't have Talon, he'd probably just dissipate into smoke, a helpless, impotent _monstrosity._ After all, there's no other place in society for him. How would he dog his targets across continents if he couldn't get through airport security? Steal a fucking motorbike and take a road trip, and sit on a picnic bench at a power station while it recharges?

Yeah _right._

Talon makes his goals possible, doesn't expect perfect allegiance from psychopaths, and their demands are simple and sweet.

Kill these people? _Fine_. He's good at killing people.

Assist with the strategic use of violence against civilians for political purposes? It's easier to just say _terrorist,_ but _fine._

Oversee the transport of weapons of mass destruction? Fine. He transports himself every day – ha ha _ha_.

It's that ambivalence to Talon that has Reaper walking away now. Sombra and Widowmaker have settled down for the night, stretched out on the floor with the understanding that he will be standing watch in case their cache is discovered, but while they sleep soundly, he will have left them. He doesn't bother feeling any sort of guilt over it; he knows that if he died, they would probably step over his body without another thought.

That's the other problem with Talon. There's no _reason_ to give a shit.

So Reaper drifts silently across the grounds under cover of darkness, a ghostly smoke trail that winds between tents and garden fixtures. In this form his hearing is muffled, voices murmuring unintelligibly, but he doesn't speak French, so all that matters is positioning. When he slips back to a humanoid form, he does not crouch or crawl, content that the darkness will shroud him well enough. Soldiers are stupid, too focused on the wrong things. It's all too easy to slip by, and those that notice him –– well, he has a firm grip around their necks for that.

He makes it to the foot of the building, underneath the hall of mirrors. Splitting oneself into a hundred million pieces and then reassembling fifty feet away seems like a tall order to some people, but to Reaper, it's an odd second-nature. He draws his arms across his chest and that lingering tension running from his wrists to his elbows is enough to trigger the _something_ that cycles his cells, compells them to dissolve into blackness. His vision cuts out, briefly, and then he is there. He wills his cells to be somewhere, and so they are.

The window where Widowmaker had shot Mercy down is halfway down the face of the building, the long shards of glass unswept. The light inside is bright, and soldiers are gathered together in the center, but they don't see him outside in the dark. For a moment, Reaper just watches, gaze drifting from the soldiers standing around their commander to the congealed streaks of blood on the floor.

He hates that Mercy still bleeds. _He_ doesn't bleed. It makes his stomach turn to think that she does.

" _Nous avons intercepté communications privées_ _d_ _ans la ville – Talon reveniez. Toutefois––_ " the commander says, holding up Sombra's missing translocator. It's offline; Sombra had to have done that. Reaper watches him turn it over in the light. The commander keeps going, and Reaper doesn't give a shit about whatever's being said in French, because he catches a glimpse of something –– someone. He shifts slightly to see between the crowd, and he catches sight of a sliver of a white breastplate. He grits his teeth, waiting for people to shift, move. Is it her? He waits and finally someone moves just enough that he sees her face, her blonde hair.

It _is_ her. 

He murmurs to her over the communicator:

"Hey."

The damned soldier moves back into his line of sight, so he doesn't get to see her reaction –– he's sorely tempted to shoot the bastard, just for denying him that, but he doesn't want to give away his position.

But she's moving. She steps up to the commander and says something quiet to him, and he nods, and touches her arm at the elbow. It's a little gesture, but the concern is there on his face, too.

"Nous nous occuperons du reste," he says. "Merci encore une fois de votre engagement, Mercy."

_Merci, Mercy._

Mercy nods, smiles; she thanks him, her French as clear as her English. She doesn't linger, striding past them. When she turns, Reaper sees her breastplate is smeared red, having been wiped at some point with a sleeve. He can't see where she was hit, but he imagines it was in the head. Sure enough, when he sees the back of her, he sees her blonde hair is matted almost black.

How the hell she survived that, he doesn't know.

With Mercy headed out of the hall, Reaper drifts away before he is noticed, following her from the exterior of the building. The building is long, and he watches her through the windows the whole way across. She walks with her chin high and her eyes ahead of her, not for a second straying towards him, even as they move into empty halls. He drifts closer to the window. Had she even heard him?

Finally, she moves from his sight, headed down a staircase. There are no windows for him to follow through, much less a door to actually enter, so he drops downstairs, landing with solid boots on the ground. 

He doesn't find her again on the bottom. 

For a moment he meanders around in the dark, following the line of the building to find a door. When he finds one, it's locked. He turns around and doubles back, growing increasingly frustrated. Had she not heard him? Not _seen_ him?

"Hey," he repeats into his communicator, a little more insistently.

There's no reponse, and then:

"I just want to go to bed. Can we do this another time?"

Reaper stops dead in his tracks.

"Do you think I care about that?" he says. "Come out here now."

"Or what?" she responds, almost immediately. She sounds frustrated. "You'll storm the building? Create chaos?"

"Yes," he says. 

She pauses. He can imagine her on the other end, weighing her options, trying to suss out whether he would do that just to get a rise out of her. (He absolutely would.) He's known her for so long that he's almost offended she'd have to think about it at all, but then again, he also feels a little stab of pride. He has leverage, even if she doesn't want to admit it.

"Doc," he says, a little lower. "I _will_ get you in trouble."

He can almost hear the gears in her head turning. 

"Fine," she says. "Just let me clean up, and I'll meet you on the roof."

The _roof_? What the fuck are they, _teenagers_?

"Where on the roof?" he says.

"Does it matter?" she says. "I'll be the only other person on the roof."

"It's not exactly a small building," Reaper says.

"It depends on where I can access a window," she says. "I'll stay in touch. Just wait for me, Reyes."

_Reyes._

He's going to get her for that.

 

* * *

 

It takes her almost an hour to do whatever it is she needs to do, and she calls him on the communicator again towards the end of it just to say she's on her way. By time they decide rendezvous on the gold and blue rooftop overlooking the marble courtyard, it's an ungodly hour in the morning, and Reaper feels exhausted from having cycled his cells around for all the traveling. Some jackass's voice floats into his mind: _Women – they keep you waiting!_ She just apologizes for having had trouble finding a window to climb out of.

He's not feeling very charitable by time she's climbing through the window, choosing to watch her struggle instead. She deserves it. She treats him like he's an inconvenience, after all. When she crosses under his chin to walk past him, he notes her hair is wet, scraped back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, her bangs pressed back. He wishes he had still a sense of smell.

"It's been a long day," she says, when he says nothing. 

"Good thing you get to end it with me, then."

She rolls her eyes and tiptoes across the narrow edge of the roof, one hand firmly on the siding. He follows her, much more confidently. She glances back at him, unsmiling, even as he boosts himself up onto the dormer. He extends a hand to her to help her up and she hesitates to take it.

"Don't drop me," she says.

"Why would I drop you?"

Her lips purse for an instant, but she lays her hand in his. Her fingers are slender, particularly against the bulk of his gloves, and he grips her a little tighter than necessary to lift her up. She is as light as a feather, and he sets her on her feet next to him. She moves to pull her hand away but he doesn't let go.

"You wouldn't be killed by a fall like that," he says. "What are you afraid of, anyway?"

"Just because I'd survive it doesn't mean I'd enjoy it," she says.

"You survived a headshot today. Widowmaker's ticked about it, by the way."

He lets go of her hand now, and she frowns. Reaper just sits back against the steep siding, boots kicked up over the ornate gold relief work. The rich assholes who decided to deck out their roof in gold deserve the mud on his boots, he thinks. Mercy seems the slightest bit more comfortable sitting down next to him, legs tucked up under her.

"How is she?" Mercy asks.

"Same as always."

Mercy nods, just once. What the hell is there to say about Widowmaker?

"And Sombra?"

"She'll live."

"Good. I felt sorry to do that to her."

"Don't."

There's a brief silence between them. He glances at her sidelong and she's looking out over the courtyard, her eyelids drooping a bit but resolve keeping her awake. She looks like hell, like the nanomachines in her skin can't keep up with the wear and tear of her work. It angers him a little –– she could retire to the Bahamas if she wanted, but instead she dogs herself. _He_ doesn't even have a choice.

His jaw hurts from gritting his teeth.

"Why are you even here?" he asks. "You said in Cairo that you were taking a position in Venezuela next."

"They pulled the job offer," Mercy replies. "I sat around at home for over a week with nothing to do, fretting about it. Then Talon decided to destroy more lives in Versailles, so I took the contract. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing."

"You're welcome," he says, and she doesn't seem to find that very funny. "Why'd they pull the job offer?"

She shrugs.

"Not a lot of people want to work with Angela Ziegler. The ones that want to work with Mercy don't get what they're looking for." And then, a confession: "It happens quite often, but I _usually_ have a better back-up plan."

It annoys Reaper that she thinks she's still Angela Ziegler, like that woman didn't die years and years ago, replaced by silicone and surgical steel and a thousand tiny nanites. Reaper never knew an Angela Ziegler, and he never will. As far as he's concerned, she's Mercy. Angela died with Gabriel.

He doesn't think she wants to talk about it anymore, but then she says: "I'm running out of options."

" _Just_ figuring out that you're not the UN's golden girl anymore?" Reaper replies.

She breathes a long sigh and looks at him. Her eyes are so tired. 

"I know you're just saying that to rub it in," she says. "But believe it or not, you are not the only one who lost something when Overwatch fell from glory."

She says things like this periodically, as if he still has deep reserves of sympathy waiting to be tapped, _just for her,_ if only she appealed to it the right way. He never falls for it, and he's never liked that wistful, moony-eyed look she has while saying it.

"Boo hoo," he says. Fuck her.

She looks disconcerted and he relishes it.

"So go back to Overwatch," he asks. "Remind yourself how much you hated it in the end."

She looks at him, eyes narrowing a touch. They've had this argument before. 

"I don't know if that would be right, either," she says, as if he hadn't said the second part. She chews on it. Damp bits of hair fall forward in her face, and she misses one when she tries to brush them back again. She mulls it over and then asks: "Did you get it, too?"

"Get what?"

"The recall."

A recall!

Reaper laughs, suddenly, alarming her. His deep voice echos off the walls of the palace, down into the marble courtyard. She reaches for his arm, but he makes no effort to stifle himself.

"Reaper," she scolds. "Contain yourself!"

A _recall!_

He carries on a moment longer and then he says, almost rasped: "The fool really did it, even after I almost killed him!"

She frowns.

"Killed who?"

"The monkey. I tried to steal the agent list, and he didn't like that much."

She sits up straighter, suddenly.

"I heard nothing of this," she says. And then, without even waiting to hear his side of it, she says: "That's cruel. You were colleagues once. Allies, at the very least."

"Winston was _never_ one of us," Reaper says.

Mercy sighs. He can tell she's upset, but they've had these kinds of conversations over and over again –– she knows, by now, that the best way to walk away from an argument with him unscathed is to simply never engage him on it. Suffer the blow of cruelty and then move on, pressing the conversation forward. She'd told him as much once, too, and he didn't take offense. It shows that deep down she doesn't care about her so-called colleagues enough to defend them anyway.

"I know you wouldn't go back, and I wouldn't waste my breath suggesting it," she says, a touch sharp. "But for myself, I don't know if I'll go. There's nothing left for me in this life, but I imagine returning to Overwatch or whatever becomes of it may not be good either."

"So you're going to answer the recall?"

The word _recall_ tastes like poison in Reaper's mouth. It's only half as bad as the thought of her going, though.

"Answer it, yes. I think after all these years they deserve a hello, at the very least. Find out who is there. But accept it –– I don't know." 

He thinks about what would happen if she slipped back into their folds. Would he drop in to see her at Gibraltar, sneak around the others to speak with her? It's one thing to do it in Versailles, neutral ground for them both, but Gibraltar? What about their other stations? Could he drop in on her in the middle of a crisis and still get away unseen? Where the hell would they talk, and how would he keep a close eye on her? God know she's never at her apartment. He doesn't even know where it is.

Regardless of how he considers it, Mercy being in Overwatch would not be a pleasant reality. It would be a betrayal.

"Don't go back," he says.

"Well then, be honest with me," she says. "What should I do, if not Overwatch?"

"Stay here. It's a great outlet for your god complex."

"I've told you there is nothing for me here," she says, a flicker of exasperation on her face.

Reaper turns his head to look at her properly, and under the cold, passive enamel of his mask, he's gritting his teeth again.

"That doesn't matter," he tells her.

"But perhaps it matters to the world." She sits up on her knees, now, hands together. It's not a plea, not quite, but it flirts with the idea. "I once changed lives instead of merely saving them. I once allowed people in almost impossible situations to cheat death. If I were in a position to–"

He grabs her under the chin in his clawed hand suddenly. Mercy has never had the best reflexes, least of all when lulled into these conversations, but she yelps now he grips her, forcing her to look at him. The cool metal of his claws dig into her skin; she grips his wrist and tenses under him, and she grits her teeth. His voice comes out darker, silkier:

"You're not going back to Overwatch because I want tabs on you to ensure you aren't ruining any more lives."

This is about as much of a warning as he'd ever give. Mercy stays tense. Her fingers around his wrist tighten, but her eyes narrow, and her voice is ruled:

"It's not up to you, Reaper," she says.

"You owe this to me," he says, immediately.

She inhales deeply through her nose, and he feels her chest expand and her posture rise, and the faint little sensation of air passing through her windpipe.

"I don't know what to tell you, Reaper," she says, "But if you don't let go of me, I _will_ end our little meetings and you will be on your own."

"You wouldn't," he says.

Her eyes harden. She _wouldn't_. But––

"You might hate me," she says, "but you need me. It goes the other way for me. _I_ don't need _you_ , Gabriel."

_Gabriel._

He lets her go, sharply, with a little shove. She has to grab onto the ironwork to protect herself from toppling, and he has half a mind to shove her again, right off the roof. He doesn't, even if he feels anger bubbling in his gut. He breathes in sharply through his nose, feels an all-body _tremble_ as his cells quake with rage. 

"Don't call me that," he says.

"Then pull yourself together," she tells him. She looks at him, mouth firm. "You're better than this pettiness. God forbid I do something to improve my life when you won't do anything for yours."

 _Won't_ do anything for _his?_ _Won't do anything for his life?_ He _would_ if he fucking _could_ ––

He just makes a noise, a low rumble of fury, and he looks away from her. The tension in his jaw feels almost unbearable, almost like he's frayed a nerve or something just from stress, and his muscles feel tight. Galvanized. There's an impulse to just do something about it, but there's nothing to do but let anger consume him – he can't just kill her, no matter what he might threaten her with, and she knows it.

Mercy sighs, long and relenting. She touches a hand to his arm, gentle as can be, and though he feels revolted by her incoming sentimentality, whatever's still human in him reaches back, pricks to her like a magnet. He doesn't look at her for a moment, but he feels the pressure of her gaze and is forced to turn his head to her. She's watching him, exhausted but troubled.

"Reaper," she says.

He hates her sympathy.

She runs that hand down his arm, to his wrist, and because she's a fucking masochist, she laces her fingers with his. He pulls them from hers immediately, and he _feels_ her sigh.

"I'm leaving now," he says. That's enough of this for one night. He's had enough of her, and worse, enough of himself.

"Of course," she says. She doesn't sound sad about it, but she doesn't sound happy, either. Mostly she just sounds concerned. "Get back safely, alright? Stay out of trouble."

He hates her in that instant, the second that drops from her mouth. He hates that he _likes_ it, this idea that she might actually be sincere about it, but he also pushes it down to a place where he can just make it his own. She _has to_ care about his wellbeing. She _owes_ it to him.

She made him what he is, after all.

He wants one last dig, though.

"If you do go back," he says, "say hi to the others from me."

That gets a ghost of a smile out of her. She won't, and he knows that well enough, but it's still funny to think about. _Reaper says hi. I talk to him sometimes, by the way._ That'd go over well. It's still not the reaction he wanted, though.

"Thank you, Reaper," she says.

"Jack and Ana, especially," he adds. It's impulsive and he regrets it as soon as it slips out, but he doubles down on it immediately. "If they even bother going."

Her smile fades, alarm on her pretty face. She opens her mouth to say something, but he gets the last word. He's gone, just smoke on the air.

 

* * *

 

When he returns to their hideaway in the hamlet, it seems he's not the only one who has been hanging out on rooftops. Widowmaker is awake, plainly visible; dawn is coming, birdsong and all, and for a moment she looks almost normal, bathed in orange light. She's sitting on the roof, _lounging_ even, her weight rested back on one hand. Her eyes narrow as he gets closer, trudging up the dirt lane.

"Will it leave a mark, at least?" she asks.

This is two-pronged. One, she only cares about herself. Two, she knows where he's been, and it's a thinly veiled threat. He's smart enough to see that.

"I doubt it," he replies, and he steps under the eaves, but he's not out of her sight for long. The sound of her movement on the old mossy shingles is strange as she follows to leap down.

"She bled."

"It looks like you just nicked her. Lots of blood vessels in the head."

"You should have finished her off."

"Who says I didn't?"

They both know he didn't even try. Widowmaker frowns, but still, there's nothing behind her eyes, so he's not sure that he's hurt her feelings. He's not sure she actually cares beyond what she is instructed to care about, anyway, and despite the dig at her high success rate, it's not actually her problem if Mercy lives or dies. Reaper's never given much thought to success rates, not since Overwatch's collapse. Nothing really matters but the few names on his list.

He lets himself into the cottage. Sombra is still asleep, but she'd moved to a couch at some point, the same one she had earlier snubbed for being stuffed with hay or cow shit. Still better than the floor in the end it seems; now she sprawls out like she's in a five star resort, drooling on the damask. It almost matches her hair.

Widowmaker stays behind him.

"You were supposed to be on watch. Does security mean nothing to you?" 

"Absolutely nothing. It's time to move out," Reaper says.

Widowmaker folds her arms, stands with a hip cocked. He feels like he could ignore her, pretend he hasn't seen, but she's more perceptive than that.  

"We killed a few soldiers who came here on patrol," she says. "They could have killed us if I hadn't awoken and heard them first."

"You lived," Reaper replies. "What's the problem?"

"Things were ugly enough when you stranded us in Giza looking for Jack Morrison –– jeopardizing an entire mission. Now you're actively impeding us. This is a poor habit."

Reaper pauses. He's on the cusp of waking Sombra up by shoving the couch with his foot, but now, sole inches from her face, he hesitates. He's not interested in taking shit from her if she wakes to Widowmaker laying into him.

Widowmaker lifts her chin a little higher. He puts his boot down.

"It's my business," he says.

"So resolve it," Widowmaker replies, curt and yet patient. "If you are compromised or otherwise unfit to do it yourself, then I will do it for you."

He sizes her up, almost defensively. As much as he dismisses her worthless life of servitude, her compulsions are unwaivering, unchanging –– _convicted_. If her directive orders her to kill, then she kills. He has no doubt about her ability to put Jack Morrison or Mercy or any other person on his list into their graves. It's the _only_ thing that drives her.

His entire face hurts, burns.

"Suit yourself," he says. He stoops to wake Sombra by shoving her by the shoulder. "But we're leaving now."

Widowmaker just continues watching him, cold and serious. Sombra yawns as she sits up, complaining about being jostled already. Reaper just thinks of Mercy's face, alarmed and conflicted. The way her eyebrows had knit and her lips had hung parted, worried.

"Where we going to now?" Sombra asks.

"Madrid," Widowmaker says. Her eyes remain trained on Reaper.

"Not far from Gibraltar," he says, just to piss her off.

She looks away, expressionless.

Maybe he'll drop in and say hey again.

 

 

.


	4. Duty-Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Morrison and Ana Amari have just over a day until their flight out of Cairo. Until then, they have time to kill, and that's the one thing they were never good at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having so much fun with this. 
> 
> (A lil filth incoming.)

> So ran the speech. Burdened and sick at heart,
> 
> He feigned hope in his look, and inwardly
> 
> Contained his anguish. […]
> 
> Aeneas, more than any, secretly
> 
> Mourned for them all 
> 
> _(The Aeneid, 1.284-286, 300-301)_

 

 

 

Jack hasn't felt this good in years.

Injecting old friends back into your life has a funny way of changing things on a dime. One week he's got nothing to speak of in his life beyond being a gun for hire, eating alone from street food stalls and getting by on broken Arabic or Spanish or whatever. The next he's at a cafe in the Islamic district of Cairo with an old friend, sipping tea and feeling at ease. Company is good. Eating at normal hours amongst other people is good. Having his best friend back is the best thing that's happened to him in years. He feels good. 

He doesn't like how much ill it bodes, but it feels _good._

Just for a minute, he wants to enjoy it.

"You seem unhappy, Jack," Ana says.

She smiles at him across the table. She has her glass halfway to her mouth, the gold rim and filigrees on the glass catching the low café light. The mid-afternoon light warms the deep lines of her face. She looks good, too. At ease.

"I'm not unhappy," he says, finally. "I was just thinking about how this is all too good to be true."

"Well," she says. There's a little mischief in her eye. "I was here just last week to meet Fareeha for coffee. It was good then and it's still good now."

He scoffs a little, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand. The sounds of the Khan Al-Khalili souk float up around them as Jack fumbles to pin down what he's thinking in words. It doesn't come easy.

"This has been nice, Ana, easily the best week I've had since the old days," he says, finally. "How long is this going to last?"

Ana hums.

"It's up to you," she says. "Unless you're suggesting either of us will be going to our graves for real sometime very soon."

"No," he says, firmly. "That's not what I meant."

"When what is it?"

He doesn't know how to say it, least of all in a crowded marketplace café. He sighs, frustrated.

"How can we sit here in a café doing nothing right now?"

The corner of her mouth quirks.

"You feel guilty for sitting to have some tea?"

"No," he says, a little gruffly. "I'm saying we should be doing more. Instead, I'm sitting here drinking _tea_ in a _café_."

Ana sets her glass down, and it clinks against the gold metal tray-table between them. The place is so crowded with chairs that the tables are little islands, smaller than the chairs themselves, not to mention utterly dwarfed by the wooden benches lining the walls, draped in colourful tapestries.

"Did you ever read the Aeneid, Jack?" she asks.

"Yes," he says. "But refresh me."

"In the first book, ships wash ashore in Carthage, and the scene is terrible; the men are bloodied and battered, and it seems impossible for them to survive, much less reach the land where they will raise Rome."

 _So?_ Jack thinks, but he chooses to listen to her slow and careful voice, centered amongst the crowds. 

"Aeneas gives the men a speech. He tells them that they have weathered worse before, and that they must call forward their courage and do away with fear and sorrow. Someday, what they are going through now will be remembered fondly, because their kingdom will rise again. They must save themselves for better days. It's a _good_ speech that fills the men with the strength to carry on."

"Alright," Jack says. He waves a hand, vaguely, and he shifts in his seat, draping a thick arm over the empty chair to his left. "Why is this relevant?"

"Because Aeneas is containing great anguish. The loss of his men and ships is a loss he feels greatest himself, as their commander, but he hides his grief. He bears the burden of leadership with great self-doubt and sacrifice, alone."

"He sounds like the wrong man for the job, then," Jack replies.

"Is he?" Ana asks. "Virgil was one of the first to write a hero who felt burdened by his losses, and then overcame them. That's why Aeneas is memorable –– or it's why he's memorable to me, anyhow."

"I just remember that he was a tool," Jack says.

Ana laughs.

"Well, I suppose that's true, too," she says. She reaches across the table for his hand; she grips him tightly enough that he feels the a hard skin between her thumb and forefinger, a callous from years of rubbing against the trigger guard. "You can be very rude."

"Nice story," he says.

"Take a lesson from it," Ana implores him. "You have to take care of yourself, my Aeneas."

Jack bows his head a little, unsure of what to say, and he runs the pad of his thumb against the underside of hers, slow and comfortable. She reaches her other hand across to put a hand on his cheek. He smiles despite himself.

"And don't smirk at me," she says, pinching him so hard it tugs at his lips. (He thinks, for an instant, that she is the only one on the planet who could get away with that without getting immediately pumped full of pulse munitions.) She says, wryly: "You must take me at my word. Don't let your sense of responsibility strip you of your humanity, of the comforts in life."

He feels a chuckle bubble up in him.

"Thanks, Ana."

 

* * *

 

 

Their crash space tonight is in a lodging house for tourists; it's the only place that fits into their budget for now, and little privately-owned places in the older districts are less likely to have security cameras or much in the way of surveillance. With his fair skin and midwestern sound, Jack fits better amongst tourists, and Ana is well used to living modestly, under the radar.

Moving has been interesting. Posing as tourists, Ana and Jack bring their gear in rolling suitcases, the oversized hard-shell ones with extra wheels and luggage tags –– the very picture of an older couple traveling on vacation, perhaps to see the wife's family. Moving in is a little tricky, given their bedroom is on the second floor, at the top of a narrow staircase. Jack lugs both suitcases up the stairs himself, one by the strap and the other dragging behind him _thud thud thud_ up the steps. Halfway up he catches one on the railing; the jostle sends a shock of pain down his back, the lingering remnants of getting shot last week. In that instant, his frustration spikes, and he rattles the suitcase to free it.

"Need help, sir?"

Jack looks up to see a young man at the top of the stairs, holding out a hand already. Jack sizes him up instinctively; he's got several inches on the kid, and he's sure he did even _before_ the SEP, but the kid doesn't know who he's looking at. He just sees the grey hair and time-worn features of an old man.

"I've got it," Jack tells him, a little defensively.

His pulse rifle is inside at an angle, padded out by his jacket and other tactical gear. He doesn't want a stranger touching it.

"Oh, Jack," Ana says. "Let the young man help."

Jack frowns down the stairs at her. She folds her arms and raises her eyebrows at him. He gives her a _look_ and she gives him one right back. She looks sterner in one eye than most people do with two.

"Fine," he says. He lets the young man take a handle. 

"Where are you and your wife from?" young man asks, conversationally.

"The US," Jack says. He hasn't actually lived in or been to the US in several years, but he wouldn't be kidding anyone saying anything else. He _feels_ Ana roll her eyes, good-natured as it is. _Don't call me American._

"Cool," the man says. "My boyfriend and I are from Canada. We got in a few days ago but we visit friends here every year, so if you folks need anything –– transit, a good place to eat, any of it, let us know."

"Thank you," Ana says, warmly. "But I grew up across the river. I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Oh!" the man says. He laughs. "I guess I should ask you for recommendations, then!"

Jack rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses, pushing by the young man to get to their room on the left. The room has narrow double doors, solid at the bottom with square glass panels from the knees up, all of them painted in bright jewel tones. Jack shoulders by them and deposits the suitcase by the bed. The young man lingers by the stairs, still prattling with Ana. ( _Canadians._ ) Jack inspects the door to see how solid the paint is, and he isn't quite satisfied. He moves to the window, which opens to the street below. It wouldn't be a pleasant drop, but it's workable as an escape route.

"Well, thank you, Jun," Ana says, voice drifting closer. "We'll see you around, after we get settled in."

She drops her shoulder bag on the bed, which was sagging in the middle even before she put a dismantled sniper rifle set-up on it. Jack gives her a look.

"Take off your sunglasses," she says. "You look ridiculous."

He takes them off and drops them on the desk with a clatter. Ana closes the door behind her and glances around the room.

"This will do," she says.

"You can tell it was only thirty-six bucks a night," Jack replies, sitting down in the white plastic garden chair. The walls have that charming vintage look –– the kindest way he can express the dire need of a paint job –– and the only other furniture is a skinny wardrobe and a carved rocking chair.

"Isn't this a step up from your usual lodgings?" she asks.

Point.

"It'll do for the next thirty-six hours," he says. Until their flight out, anyway. There's something going on in Versailles, and unless something changes in the next few days, they might be able to pick up on Talon's trail again.

Ana hums and sits on the edge of the bed. She pulls her tablet from a pocket hidden in the long drapes of her shawl and starts tapping away at the screen. Jack gives the glass panels of the door a furitive look and decides to unpack the suitcases with the open suitcase obscured by the foot of the bed, which is up against the wall.

"Do you want the outside or inside?" he asks.

"Outside. I'm not crawling over you to get out of bed to pee in the middle of the night."

"Getting old?" he teases.

"Some of us chose to age gracefully," she says, tapping away.

He chuckles under his breath; there wasn't much choice in it, in the long run, but fine by him. He likes his back to the wall anyway.

His rifle has once more superficially survived a trip being hauled around in a suitcase, but he checks it over again and re-assembles the removable components before stashing it in the wardrobe. He hangs his coat up above it, long with Ana's and the rest of their body armor, and he sets his mask and belts up on the shelf. He loops a U-shaped bike lock through the handles of the wardrobe. It won't stop anyone with anything larger than a hatchet or a decent kick, but it's what he's got.

"Hmm," Ana says. "There's a news bulletin; it seems Angela is back in action."

Jack frowns and sits back on his heels. 

"How so?"

"She's in Versailles. She shot a Talon agent."

"Hmm," Jack echos, lower, more gravelly. "It's a pretty big coincidence, after what happened with Reyes."

"It wasn't public knowledge she'd be there," Ana says. "They likely knew."

"Hmm."

Ana taps twice more and then turns the tablet around. Angela's face gazes back at him in a soundless looping video. She's standing with some UN officials, two of which Jack recognizes from the old days; it turns his stomach a little. He watches her eyes track to the side, to someone off camera. She looks uncomfortable, but she's smiling politely. The tagline reads: _Mercy back in action? Disgraced doctor on scene in Versailles––_ Jack frowns.

"She was nearly sniped," Ana remarks, and then she clucks her tongue. "Standing near a window! Dear, dear. She should have known better."

"Well, at least she's alright," he says. "For now. She just painted a target on her back. And the UN –– I thought they had her on lockdown."

"They must have decided it's been long enough that they can start taking their best out of storage," Ana says, and her tone is indecipherable. Jack is immediately wary of the idea. He doesn't believe it for an instant, and he doubts Ana does either. She continues: "That or she decided enough was enough and decided to do it on her own."

"Like you did," Jack remarks.

Ana nods.

"It was only a matter of time before she walked away from disgrace and joined the rest of us in 'death.'"

"She's always been _afraid_ of death," Jack hums.

"Of course she is," Ana says. "She's lost mostly everyone she's ever cared about. Two of which, I may note, are sitting in a hotel in Cairo. For all she knows, we're both dead."

Both of them lapse into silence.

"I'm going to go shower," he says.

 

* * *

 

The bathroom shared amongst the tenants at the lodging house is modest, just a narrow room with a pedestal sink, shower tub and a surprisingly modern toilet. Someone has left their pink toothbrush on the sink, and the bar soap is sitting in a quarter inch of water. Even with those two things, it is the cleanest bathroom he has been in for months. If it weren't so goddamn narrow –– a fact that becomes all-too obvious when he bumps his hip against the sink squeezing around the tub –– it'd almost be like the little bathroom off his bedroom at his parents' old farm house. 

Jack sheds his clothes with some relish. Not only has he been bathing out of washbasins for a week, but he also hasn't had more than a moment alone. Even before he and Ana reunited, he was sleeping in hostels or whatever quiet place he could find, far from true privacy.

In this moment, in Jack's eyes, this bathroom is sacred space. He'll take his goddamn time.

He looks at himself in the mirror, or at least what he can see in the mirror –– it's too small for the space, or at the very least he's much too big for it. He sees himself from the thighs up, completely nude. His jaw has gotten a little weaker, these past few years; it looks a little softer, a little older. He still has his broad shoulders, his sculpted, efficient musculature, his powerful thighs, all of the SEP's "gifts" to its human experiments. Now, though, he has a bit more padding than he used to, a bit of paunch to his belly and his hips. Jack turns slightly, just to inspect; it makes him look a little closer to his age. He's kept new scars to a minimum these past few years, and save for the new marks on his back, he looks pretty good.

Reyes' voice floats up in his memory, unwelcome, eyes rolling: _Shame SEP didn't think to give you an ass._

_Fuck you._

He drags the shower curtain closed and turns on the water as hot as he can go. It stings his skin at first, but then he settles into its warmth. 

He feels the stress of the past few weeks melt away in mere minutes, standing still with the showerhead beating on his shoulders. He tips his head back now and again. His mind drifts. His back hurts a little less.

It hurts because a week ago, Reyes had put a shotgun muzzle to his spine and pulled the trigger.

It feels strange to think about. In his mind, there's almost some sort of disconnect. Until that very moment where he'd laid on his own arm in the dirt, he'd been operating under the oddly blissful assumption that Reyes was buried. If not six feet under, then he was probably at least shoveled away with the rest of the rubble of the HQ, his DNA  intermingled with the recycled concrete, or melted down with the glass. A burial, however it was.

Now he's alive.

Ana, too.

He thinks, mind haphazard in the steam, about what Reyes looks like now –– black leather, heavy mask with owlish eyes, broad-shouldered. Whatever happened to him, he looks like a man, but something about Ana's reaction said otherwise.

He hasn't bothered to ask. He doesn't want to talk about Reyes yet.

Jack finds himself thoughtlessly jerking himself. He screws his eyes shut, leans a shoulder against the unforgiving tile, knees loosening.

He doesn't want to think about Reyes, but he does.

His voice hadn't sounded normal. It had sounded like a voice box, electronic, a loose approximation of Reyes' low, dark voice.

Reyes, alive. He wonders if Angela knows. If Reyes found him in the midst of hunting Ana, then Reyes could certainly find her. Maybe Angela shot him. Maybe he'll see them both in Versailles.

He pushes those thoughts away, too. His breath quickens.

He thinks of slamming his shoulder into Reyes' gut to ground him, feeling him crumple under him. Reyes had sprawled in the dirt in a compound in Giza, and Jack had straddled him, pinned him –– punched him in the face. He thinks of how his pants must have strained tight against his groin, just from the spread of his thighs, and his. In the heat of the moment, he didn't notice the hard buckle of Reyes' belt, but he feels it in his mind's eye now. Reyes had lifted a hand. Swung back, rolled him off.

There was tension, strain; his muscles burned. 

Reyes had nearly gutted him with a punch. He'd had... claws? Everything had hurt, but Jack had felt alive.

Someone in the hall laughs loudly.

Jack looks down at his hand, at the come splattered across his skin. He scissors his fingers open, watching it stretch gelatinously across the gap; when he turns his hand, putting it back under the stream, it all drips away. He watches it catch on the edge of the grate and he toes it off, and then watches it disappear down the drain. 

Gone.

He breathes, low and deep. The water is still warm. For a moment he stands there, water streaming down the sides of his face from the back of his head. He lets out a long exhale and pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed tight as water streams down. 

He feels at ease. Relaxed.

Jack walks back from the shower with the towel around his waist. Rounding the corner, he nearly bumps into that Canadian guy, whatever the fuck his name is. The young man's eyes flick down, and then up again, and a grin passes over his face, even as he apologizes under his breath and brushes by. Jack's initial annoyance swiftly turns cocksure; he _does_ look good.

He pushes back into the room and closes the door behind him. Ana turns in her seat at the desk to smile at him, a hand over her mouth.

"You look refreshed," she says. "Is the water nice?

"Surprisingly," he says. "You going to go?"

"After. I made some food; come eat."

She slides her plate along the desk. It's laden with foole, beans with diced tomatoes and onion covered in sunny-side-up eggs. She has a piece of baladi bread in hand already; the rest is piled high on the side. He takes a piece, too, and he sits on the corner of the bed closest to her to eat it. Still in his towel.

"Breakfast for dinner," he says. "Are you sure you're not American?"

"Just eat," Ana replies. "How's your back?"

"Lousy."

"Let me take a look," Ana says. She twirls a finger in gesture, and Jack stands, gripping the front of his towel with one fist so it doesn't fall. He turns to reveal the long expanse of his back. Ana prods in a place or two; he's not sure if it's the boniness of her fingers or if she's poking hard just to tease him. "Oh, it looks fine. The rest is probably just age –– even you aren't immortal, Jack."

"It still feels like hell," he says.

"So what? Get dressed, you're going to catch cold with the air conditioner running."

Like hell he will, but he doesn't argue. She turns away to eat, looking at her tablet again. He changes right behind her, carelessly; they've known each other for so long it wouldn't matter, even if she turned around. 

"I thought you might be embarrassed if I said it earier," she says. "But if you want to get two rooms next time, we can splurge here and there."

He idly wonders if she'd heard him, but he'd imagine not, all the way down the hall. She just guesses, or knows, given the quarters they'd lived in back in the old days. The things they'd talk about. Nothing was secret, then. 

Still, he scoffs, waves her off.

"Aw, Ana," he says. "I don't have time for that stuff anymore, haven't for years. I'm too damn old."

"Thought I'd ask, just in case." She shrugs and dips her bread in the eggs; the yolks run thickly over the foole, and she scrapes it away until the bread is absolutely saturated. "But then again, I never much liked your taste in lovers anyway, so I'm glad to hear it."

His _tastes_ –– she knows all his sore spots, teases them out like nothing. He buttons his jeans and adjusts where they sit on his hips, and then he sets on yanking himself into a shirt. 

"Do you remember that joke I had with Angela?" he says. "Way back."

"Which one?"

"She and I joked we'd get together at fifty if neither of us found someone worth settling for," he says, in a low rumble.

Ana laughs, high and musical. He can't help but chuckle a bit, too. It's a stupid mental image for either of them.

"Your train already left the station on that one," she says, wryly. "And hers still hasn't arrived at the station! You saw her picture yesterday –– she looks the same as she did fifteen years ago. She'll probably still look like that another fifteen years from now!"

"Probably," Jack says, and he chuckles, a low noise that almost sounds like a growl. "I should have made that pact with _you_."

She waves a hand at him in dismissal, but sees the smile on her face.

 

* * *

 

Four A.M. rolls around and Jack finds himself wide awake, staring into the ceiling. The air conditioner is humming incessantly, and it's too cold; Ana has stolen all the blankets, winding herself into the red and white crochet like a mummy, and as such Jack is suffering with the AC's breeze on his goddamn toes. It is summer. He will be damned if he sleeps in socks.

He shifts on the firm mattress, trying to avoid the sag in the center, and his back still aches. Angela's voice floats into his head: _They don't solve all your problems. They repair much of the damage, but there will still be pain. A shot of adrenaline will take care of it at first, but then…_

Pain, he can work through. Always have, always will.

And then he thinks of Reyes again. How could he not?

The pain had been hot and searing, the jab of his shotgun inches from his spine. If he'd had a rifle or something, it could have paralyzed Jack, but instead he'd settled for a wide spray. More pain that way, and Jack has to wonder if that says something about the kind of man Reyes is, and if he'd always been that way. Scarier up close and personal.

Even so, it's been a long time since he was on the recieving end of Reyes' shotguns. It felt as awful the other week as it did at the HQ.

He shifts in bed again.

Next time he meets Reyes, he's going to put the bastard out of his misery.

He thinks he sleeps for a moment or two, even if his brain keeps running on with thoughts. He opens his eyes; the ceiling is a dreary off-white, maybe even closer to yellow, and he can see the ghosts of smoke damage even in the dark. The light from the street is obnoxious, and the coloured panes in the bedroom door are dimly illuminated by the light down the hall. Someone downstairs laughs a little loudly. Young women, not the Canadian couple.

"Jack," Ana says, "go to sleep!"

"Take your own advice," he growls. "Pass the blanket, by the way."

She unfurls herself, tossing half over him. He rolls over and scowls into his pillow; it is an unsettling lime green gingham, in complete discord with the rest of the room.

"Still thinking?" she asks him.

"Yes," he says.

"Well, don't," she tells him. "Tell me, instead of driving yourself mad with it tumbling around in your head. You've been in a sour mood all day."

He scoffs at her. He's spent years more or less alone, in the company of mercenaries and unsavoury sorts. As fast as he's been to fall into relying on her again, part of him hesitates. Tumbling around is just what his thoughts _do_. It would take _years_ to unload them.

"I probably went mad years ago."

"Don't be silly."

"Alright." A pause. "What if I'm responsible for Reyes becoming what he is?"

Ana turns, leaning up on an elbow. Her grey hair falls over her shoulder, long bangs in her face, but it does nothing to hide frown on her face.  

"Do you think you are?" she asks.

"I don't know yet," he says. "I don't know what happened to him." 

Ana doesn't reply. He pauses, too –– there are girls in the hall, teenagers, talking loudly, and though they are plenty distracted with some rowdy conversation, he still drops his voice.

He adds: "What was under his mask?"

"Nothing I ever wanted to commit to memory," Ana says, and she shakes her head. "But don't think it's your responsibility just because he blames you. He could trip on a stone and curse you for it."

He's not sure if he wants to know what's under the mask. Maybe it would be better not to know, but he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter if Ana doesn't feel like sharing.

"He's a terrorist. A murderer." He pauses. "He wants to live his life that way, fine, but I don't see how that's my doing. Does he think _I_ blew up the goddamn headquarters?"

"He may." She pauses and glances at the coloured glass panes again, as if there might be someone there, and then she looks back at him. "I wouldn't worry about it, Jack. He started showing his true colours as a psychopath long before you did anything to him."

"Everything in Blackwatch," he says. 

"Yes," Ana says. "It's a shame Reyes couldn't move past the UN's choice, but it would be foolish to pretend he did not make a string of poor choices. _Cruel_ choices. I don't know what happened to him, but no matter what it is, it doesn't excuse him."

Jack nods, shallow but sure.

"Regardless, he has gone off the deep end," Ana says. "Eliminating Reyes should be our first priority now."

"I agree," Jack says.

There's a long pause between them. Jack looks at her; she is still perched up on an elbow, but she's looking out into the room, imperceptible. In the dark, her brow shades the ugly place where her right eye had once been, obscuring it from view once more. Her lips are pursed.

He breathes a long sigh.

It'll be hard –– but in a sick way, he's looking forward to it.

 

* * *

 

Morning comes early. He wakes to Ana speaking in Arabic; there is no other voice, so he knows she is on the phone even before he rolls over to look. When he sits up, he realizes she's tucked the blanket in around him. 

Ana glances his way, and she mouths at him. Her expression is grave. She covers the mouthpiece with her hand for a beat, and she says to Jack: "We're going to meet Fareeha right now. We need to talk."

"Oh," he says, unmoved. Must be serious. Ana goes back to speaking with her daughter, and so Jack shimmies across the bed and grabs his pants from where they're draped over the headboard. 

Ana hangs up.

"What's going on?" he says.

"She doesn't think the line is secure," Ana says. "She'll tell us when we get there."

They're out the door in minutes.

Fareeha meets them in a nearby park in Tahrir Square, and in truth, it's not much of a park; there's an expanse of grass that Jack is sure consumes a great deal of water every day in order to stay green, and a row of palm-looking trees towering over the walking path alongside the busy roads. Just a little more south, there's a large tiled area with benches and lampposts, and they spot Fareeha standing in the midst of it all. She's practically a beacon, dressed in rich cobalt blue amongst the morning greys, her statuesque figure towering above all around her. Her hands are in the pockets of her long, blousy coat, and she doesn't look particularly enthused. It's difficult to remember that this woman had once sat on his shoulders as a little girl. He'd tried to teach her how to salute only for her to proudly show him she already knew. He'd read her bedtime stories about famous battles in a booming voice, which he did spectacularly, even then. Now, she's a real soldier.

All grown up and gone to war.

"Mum," she says, first, and then she looks to Jack. She salutes him. "Sir."

"All grown up," he remarks. Fareeha nods.

Ana is not so reserved.

"We look like sisters, don't we?" Ana says, a firm hand on Fareeha's waist; Fareeha puts on an exasperated smile, and places a hand over her mother's. Always the consummate professional.

"You do look just like your mother," Jack says to Fareeha. _Act natural._

"Thank you," she says, and she looks at her mother briefly. "We should get right to business."

"Is it safe to talk about here?" Ana asks.

Fareeha glances both ways, and Jack does too, entirely out of habit. The park is relatively quiet, and on a brief inspection, it's likely safe. Jack watches Fareeha's jaw square for a moment. For the first time in his life, he sees her hesitate.

"I got a call from Dr. Ziegler at five o'clock this morning," she says. "It appears someone told her about the both of you."

Jack frowns. He glances at Ana, but she's looking at her daughter with a careful measure of alarm. He feels it too.

"What did you tell her?" Ana asks.

"I told her I didn't know anything," Fareeha says.

"Good girl," Ana says. "I don't imagine she believed you, though."

"I don't think she did," Fareeha admits. "And it didn't seem like an idle fancy of hers, either –– she sounded distraught. I have never heard her like that before."

"Poor thing," Ana says.

"Wait," Jack interjects. "Who told her?"

"She wouldn't say," Fareeha says.

"Who else knows, though?" Jack asks Ana. She's looking at him already, consternation on her face. They both know his question is rhetorical, woefully cognizant of the truth. Jack says: "God damnit."

"Who told her?" Fareeha asks, diplomatically, but her eyebrows are firmly knit.

"Reyes is the only one other than you who knew," Ana replies. "He _must_ have been the agent she shot. We need to talk to her now."

Jack feels control spiralling away once more, just like it had all those years ago when Overwatch's dirty laundry had been aired. Now there's a potential domino chain of information spreading, just like with Overwatch –– piece after piece spilling to the public, his signature on every piece of paper, his leadership ready to be led to the guillotine. Angela was there when it happened the first time, and she'd know better than to spill secrets, but he's worried. If Mercy's little reappearance is the work of the _UN_ putting her back in the field, then it might be that it's not only that Reyes has told her about them –– it's that the UN might know, too, and they're taking their first stab at flushing him out.

It's all going up in smoke. The past day seems like a mistake, a brief flickering time of relaxation he didn't deserve to take. 

"I don't want to talk to her," Jack says. It's a lie –– he does. But this, he decides, is as much for her safety as his, at least until they can ascertain what's going on. Jack looks to Ana. "We can't know whether it's the UN."

"But don't you think we should at least reach out to her in some way?" Ana replies. 

"No," he says. "If the UN is involved in any way, it's trouble."

He hadn't planned on ever being found again, but he feels like he has crosshairs between his eyes, suddenly.

_Damnit._

"There's one more thing," Fareeha says. Her voice goes up a note, almost hopeful, and Jack thinks it doesn't bode well for him.

"Go ahead, soldier," Jack says, ruling out the dread.

"The recall to Gibraltar was put out last night," she says. "Overwatch has returned."

The crosshairs focus.

Jack feels like a dead man.


	5. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past hot on her heels, Angela returns to Watchpoint: Gibraltar and makes merry with Winston and Lena, with the promise of more good times to come.

.

 

 

 

Angela washes away a lot in that first long shower after checking into her hotel in Málaga. The hot water takes it all off equally, without prejudice –– the grime of the past few days, the last scraps of exhaustion, and the tears. She allows herself a little cry to feel sorry for herself, as anyone should. It has been a hard few days.

But the best thing to wash away is the guilt. She'd done what she could in Versailles, and with Talon moved on, so could she. She'd served them well and as dutifully as she could. There's no sense in hanging onto guilt overhaving completed that work when she's moving back towards her a higher calling.

All of this swirls down the drain. She emerges as the woman who will be Mercy again by tomorrow, when she takes the two hour bus to Algeciras, where Lena will meet her with a helicopter. She feels refreshed, revitalized. She doesn't even need to nap; she had slept almost the entire train ride from Paris to Madrid and then Madrid to Málaga, lulled there by the persistent hum of the maglev train against the guideway. She'd taken that train many times before, and though she would have liked to see the whitewashed pueblos and cork oaks wrapped around the mountains again, she couldn't keep her eyes open.

She gets to work on making future arrangements, next. She'd spoken with Lena and Winston at length before departing, but disappearing to Gibraltar doesn't excuse her of her other responsibilities. Wrapped in a towel on the bed, she calls her lawyer in Zurich, who patiently explains no less than four times what she is risking by going back to Gibraltar. The Petras act forbids her from taking vigilante action, and she's already going to be facing a mountain of paperwork and possible legal pressure over her "stunt" in Versailles, sanctioned at the time or not. Still, Angela persists, and they settle on a compromise. Angela will keep her visit a secret and see if Overwatch really is worth returning to before making any rash decisions. Then, once she has decided, they will proceed from there, with the understanding that she will be risking exposure either way.

She then calls her assistant in Basel and speaks with her for an hour to make arrangements for her apartment. She has decades worth of medical research there, including her parents', and all of it must be accounted for. If the UN is alerted to her presence there, she wants to be sure her belongings are safe and cannot be seized.

She also calls Reaper, just in case he's feeling generous, to ask about Jack and Ana again. He doesn't answer. She feels both relieved and disappointed as he fails to open his communicator line, but ah, well. It can't be helped.

The fourth call, however, is incoming. For a second she thinks it is Reaper calling her back, but it's not. Her heart skips a beat: Fareeha Amari, video call. She accepts the call without hesitation, and she sets the phone down again so the hologram screen can take over. Their first call before the train ride had ended disappointingly, and Angela hadn't expected another. 

But now, Fareeha smiles gamely. Her eyes flick to someone off-screen. Angela feels herself swell with hope. She hopes her smile reads cautiously optimistic.

"Hello again, Dr. Ziegler," Fareeha says. A far cry from the _Miss Angela_ she'd gotten when Fareeha was a girl. _Auntie Z._

"Hello," Angela replies. "How are you?"

"I'm well," Fareeha says. "Are you in Gibraltar yet?"

"I've only gotten as far as Málaga," Angela says. "Lena is picking me up tomorrow."

"Glad to hear it. You see, I called to ask a favour. Perhaps you could put me in touch with her. I will need the jet sent for a pick-up as well," she says. 

"Are you coming?"

"No," Fareeha says. "I cannot leave my position here quite yet, but perhaps in the near future. This is for two other former Agents who have misplaced their beacons."

Fareeha looks amused, the happy bearer of good news. Angela just clasps her hands to her chest and closes her eyes for a moment. Her sigh of relief is the largest she's had in years. If Overwatch's recall wasn't legally fraught, she might express that outright, but for now, she holds her tongue.

For days she has contemplated the whys and hows of Jack and Ana both being alive still. Now, she lets the truth consume her.

"Of course," she says, finally, nodding. She can't resists a broader smile, though. "I'll speak with Winston and Lena; in fact, I'll have them call you. What should I tell them, in the mean time?"

"Just that two agents need a pick up. And I'll need to know where I should send them as soon as possible, too," she says. "I'm thinking Algiers may be best on our end, but I may be able to get them closer if that is still too far. It depends on what clearance I can get."

"Very well," Angela says. "I'll let them know. Thank you, Fareeha."

Fareeha nods.

"It's my pleasure," she says.

"Can we speak a little?" Angela asks, hopeful. "Even just a word?"

Fareeha pauses, and then shakes her head. They must be careful.

"You'll see them in a few days."

Angela exhales deeply. No matter; all she can think about is getting to hold them again, getting to wrap her arms around their necks and kiss their warm faces. All she wants to do is have these beloved people back in her life, back from the dead. How that is remains almost irrelevant to her; all that matters is that death has been reversed once more.

"Wonderful," she says. "From the bottom of my heart, Fareeha –– thank you. Send them my love. I've missed them so very much."

Fareeha smiles, no different from how when she was a little girl, beaming warm joy. Angela recalls sitting up late one night at a base when Fareeha was a girl, drinking hot chocolate and smiling just as joyfully at news of her mother's safe return from yet another successful mission. How wonderful, that Fareeha could be with her in such a similar moment, decades later.

"They send their love in return," Fareeha says. "Goodbye, Dr. Ziegler!"

Angela sits there with her hands over her heart as the call closes.  

Everything feels wonderful.

 

* * *

 

Morning comes quickly. Her things already packed, Angela heads to Paseo de los Tilos by taxi to get her bus. She hasn't been there in several years, but as the great white structures of the roof come into sight, she feels a sense of relief. Everything is going to be different, but with hope, it will be fine. She boards her bus and settles into window seat. An omnic gentleman takes the seat next to her; he has a faulty part somewhere and he whirrs the entire time, but Angela doesn't mind. The white noise is nice. It balances out the hovers on the bus.

In Algeciras she goes down to the port. In earlier years, she would have just taken the taxi the twenty kilometers to Gibraltar's private airport, but Overwatch vehicles would stick out like a sore thumb now –– a surefire way to have the Petras Act brought down on their heads. Now, the way to the Watchpoint is to have Lena touch down at the port for just a moment; apparently the stealth jet can get close enough that Angela can just "hop on." She's not sure how difficult that will be in practice, but if that's what's available, that's what they'll do.

She waits on the end of a dock, feeling like a sore thumb in her leggings and white coat, two large suitcases at her side. The port is mostly empty, on a Sunday; tourists here come for the natural parks, to see the cork trees –– otherwise they frequent the larger cities of Andalusia, cities like Grenada and Seville. Angela has never been to either save for work. It's so quiet. She checks her communicator every two minutes, out of habit. She checks the news. Nothing yet. She checks her messages, and she checks the UN's social media feeds. Nothing. She calls Winston.

"She's on her way now," he says. "Want me to patch you through?"

"No, I trust that it will be fine," Angela says. "Let her focus on piloting."

"Right," Winston says. "Looking forward to seeing you, Dr. Ziegler!"

An hour later, when the jet drops its invisibility cloak and finally comes into view, Angela breathes a sigh of relief. It's a small jet, suited to carrying six people or less. Overwatch had once maintained a small fleet of these, alongside larger vessels, and most had been decommissioned, if not outright destroyed –– the UN couldn't repurpose them, considering Overwatch's tech was irrepairably associated with disgrace. (The fruits of unethical testing and ill-gotten funding, they'd said. Used in covert missions that violated international laws, they'd said. At that point, most of the proof had gone down with the Swiss HQ, but the damage had been done.)

It doesn't land; there isn't quite enough space on the dock. Instead, Lena turns it perpendicular, where the hatch door can hit the planks, the stationary plasma thrusters displacing deep pockets into the water. Angela has to boost her suitcases four feet off the ground while the jet gently sways back and forth, and then climb in herself.

"Sorry I'm late, love," Lena says from the front seat. "I was trying to get the autopilot up and runnin' so I could send it to you while I kept helping Winston get the Watchpoint online, but then I just decided to come get you myself anyway!"

"Ah, that's alright," Angela replies. Lena talks fast, and moves even faster; when Angela reaches to get the door behind her, Lena hits a button and the power starts up on its own. "I think seeing you is a better greeting anyhow."

She leans over to kiss Lena's cheek, and Lena giggles and reaches up a hand to squeeze her in return.

"Happy to see you too!" she chirps. Her goggles are perched on the top of her forehead, and she reaches up to push them up higher. "You know, you looked great when you were on the news the other day, but in person –– wow! You haven't aged a day."

Angela laughs as she slides into the co-pilot's seat. She gets it all the time, but it feels better coming from a friend. 

"Thank you!" Angela says. "I'm always improving my nanotechnology, in my spare time… as a private citizen, of course. It's been quite successful!"

"I'll say," Lena says. Her eyes crinkle when she smiles. "You look really good for a woman of…"

"We'll say thirty-seven," Angela says.

"I won't tell anyone," Lena says, and she winks.

Angela smiles as they take off.

She smiles even more when they land in Gibraltar.

 

* * *

 

 

The Watchpoint shows few signs of neglect, overall, but that which exists is most notable in the control room. Angela finds herself a little surprised to see that the space that once housed their round-table briefings is now part workshop, part living quarters, and part mountain of empty peanut butter containers. Every surface is covered in tools and bits of soldering wire and great blue rolls of schematics and bits and pieces of new hardware. It's dim; in fact, she can only barely see Winston's massive black form sat in his computer chair because of the light of his monitor.

She's glad she looks down to see the ground before she steps in too far; there's a green cannister laid where she might have tripped over it. 

"Whoops," Lena says. "Big Guy hasn't been keeping up the place very well. We'll get to that, though. You know as part of severance, the UN airdrops a pallet of peanut butter every month? He gets _reaaaal_ surly towards the end when he's running out––"

Winston turns at the sound of Lena's voice. His eyes flick to her, and then to Angela.

"Dr. Ziegler!" he says.

"Winston!"

He hauls himself to all fours and he moves up the steps to her, broad enough to take up the entire staircase. For a moment it seems like he'll hug her, but after a moment of fumbling he sticks a hand out.

Winston's handshake is tremendous. Angela had forgotten quite how immense they were until she's standing there in front of him, her whole hand swallowed up by his great palm. His index finger almost reaches to her elbow. He doesn't shake so much as hold her hand for a moment, sitting back on his haunches with his chest swollen with pride.

"Dr. Ziegler," he says, voice thick, as if they hadn't already spoken on the phone at length. "I must admit, until we saw you on the news, I didn't think you would answer."

"I didn't think I would either, until the world broadcasted Mercy everywhere," she says. She slips from his hand in order to embrace him, her arms around his massive neck. "My dear friend, I am sorry I did not keep in touch more."

"That's okay," he says. "I understand."

"Surely it must have been lonely here, though?" Angela asks, concerned, pulling away to look at him but keeping her hands squarely on his shoulders.

He looks genuinely surprised by her concern, as if it hadn't occured to him, either.

"I wasn't all alone," Winston says. "I had Athena, and Tracer visited when she could. And last year you sent me a Christmas card from Hong Kong, with a picture of me drawn by a little patient of yours! It was very nice. I still have it on the wall."

Considering his genius and massive size, Angela is perpetually charmed by his childlike appreciation for the small touches, his wonderful memory for _experiences_. Winston is kinder and more genuine than most humans.

"Well, I'm glad," she says. She looks to Lena with a smile. "Whatever becomes of us now, I'm glad to be in good company."

Together the three of them move back down the stairs, into the broader room.

"Whatever becomes of us now!" Lena laughs. "Well –– I don't know what you're talking about, 'coz I plan on making Overwatch internationally renowned and beloved again. I'm not getting prosecuted."

"We're going to play this smart," Winston adds. "Only act in situations where we're undeniably doing good. Make it real difficult for them to criticize us."

Angela nods.

"I see."

"The world isn't going to be defended at all if we don't step up," Winston says, "I'd been going back and forth on this for years, but after what happened a week ago, I knew the time is right."

He glances at Angela, as if waiting for her to ask what happened, but she's afraid her expression is notably uncurious. She breathes a sigh.

"I've had my own encounters with Reaper," she says. "He told me what happened."

Lena frowns.

"He _told_ you?"

Angela contemplates her wording.

"Do you know who is under that mask?" Angela asks, delicately.

"He's Reyes," Winston says, confidently, but then his face falls. "Or at least… maybe he used to be. I don't know _what_ he is now."

Angela nods, slowly. She leans against the edge of the hologram table; the orange globe projected above it bleeds through her head, but she pays it no notice. Lena comes a few steps closer, arms folded under her chronal accelerator. 

"Has he gone after you, too?" Lena asks, concerned. "You two used to be close…"

"He enjoys popping up in my life to taunt me; I've been regretfully powerless to stop him," she says. It's the short, terrible of truth of it, but she doesn't want to talk about it more than that. It makes her feel ugly. She looks to Winston. "I'm sorry to hear about what he did to you, Winston."

" _Almost_ did," Winston corrects her.

Winston is pacing now, lumbering up the stairs and then down again, and then up to his tractor-sized tire swing and then down again. He just keeps moving, smooth but directionless. Working off steam.

"Almost did," Angela confirms. "Do you know what he targeted you for?"

"He tried to steal the database with Overwatch agent positions," he says. "Athena and I stopped him. All they got in the end were things –– things we can rebuild, but things nonetheless.'

Angela pauses.

"Translocators?"

Winston frowns. That says all Angela needs to know.

"Another agent of Talon has them," she says. "A young woman. Her name is Sombra. I don't know her well but she's the one I shot in Versailles."

Winston nods.

"Well," he says. "We'll handle that when we come across her. Everything else just needs a little cleaning, and getting Athena back online across the board."

Angela nods. They all fall silent for a beat. Not for the first time, she considers that if Overwatch is to return, that it had best be without the corruption of the past. In this very moment, she considers that it means it should not include her –– she may just lure Reaper back in.

She considers revoking his access to her communicator. She's done it before, for brief periods of time –– sometimes when he's gotten too abusive, sometimes when he's just been unrelenting in his pursuit of her. With Winston and Lena by her side and feeling hopeful for the future, she thinks maybe she could use a break again, as could he.

Though he may need her sometimes, it is most responsible to protect herself, and discourage him when he is angry with her. It's her duty as not only a physician, but now as a returned agent of Overwatch. 

It would be reasonable to maintain more distance.

"Well," Angela says, finally. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Of course. We've been short on help, so most of the Watchpoint hasn't been brought online yet," Winston says. Angela senses some rambling coming, so she just smiles. "I haven't had reason to go into most of it for years, so only the central hub is active. Lena and I have been working on getting the jets back into working order to better facilitate returning people to the Watchpoint, so we haven't done much to get it ready for… well. People."

"Some hospitality, huh?" Lena adds.

"So we need to get the Watchpoint up and running again," Angela says. "Very well. What does that entail?"

"Turning the generators back on," Lena says. "But the problem there is––"

She points at Winston with both hands. He blinks at her and then picks up for her: "The generators are in the basement. Underneath the medbay! You know where that is."

"Like the back of my hand," Angela says.

"Even in the dark?" Winston asks.

Angela chuckles.

"Well," she says. "Maybe not _that_ good. I hope you have a flashlight."

"You're our flashlight," Lena teases. She makes a gesture, her arms spread like wings.

"I don't have my wings back yet!" Angela replies. "You didn't seriously wait for me for that?"

Lena laughs.

"No!! I just thought it'd be funny. But you know what? Forget all this. You just landed!" Lena says. "You should be getting settled in. What do you say, Winston?"

Winston nods.

"I think that'd be best," he says. "We'll get the power on tonight."

Lena reaches to Angela and takes her hands.

"I'll show you where we're sleeping for now."

 

* * *

 

Angela hasn't slept in the barracks in a long, long time.

When she'd first been brought into Overwatch, all those years ago –– god, it feels like a lifetime –– and had visited Gibraltar for the first time, Jack Morrison had stood at her side in the doorway and peered into the open bay barracks and promised to find her a better room soon. _The barracks are for rookies,_ he'd said. _It's just for now. Soon you'll have a private room off the medbay._

She'd felt momentarily embarrased, looking at the skinny beds and their hard mattresses. She'd said something to the effect of not wanting special treatment, no matter how unappealing the beds seemed. No matter how unfriendly and impersonal it seemed.

Jack had laughed. He'd reached and touched the small of her back with just the tips of his fingers. He'd said: " _Everyone_ gets moved to a shared room eventually, Ang."

She'd laughed. The beds hadn't seemed so unfriendly, sudden. In fact, she'd ended up relishing those first few days in the barracks, alongside others who seemed just as excited to be in this brave new world. People had stayed up late, chatting in the dark even after the Commander's imposed lights out. Everyone had been excited. Electrified, waiting for the first call to action as an agent of Overwatch.

The barracks just seem unfriendly now, cold and empty.

Angela stands in the open doorway, toes against some invisible line. Lena stands at her side, but she's not close like Jack was, and she doesn't touch her like Jack did. They both look into the room, the only light streaming through the open door. Half of the mattresses are still turned on their sides, leaning crooked against the bed frames and the big plastic storage bins along the row. 

"Honestly, I slept on top of Winston the past few nights. Weird to say it but I didn't want to stay in here alone. I'll crash in here tonight, though, so we're together," Lena says. She admits: "It's a bit spooky."

Angela nods. No one's slept in here for years.

"We'll make the beds," Angela says. "It'll be a bit more like home that way. Do we have bedlinens?"

"Yeah, I'll get some. Might be a bit musty but they're clean! You want to start turning the mattresses over?"

"Sure," Angela says.

Off Lena goes. Angela lingers a second longer in the doorway, just watching, but she takes a few tenative steps in and nothing terrible happens. Her heels echo on the cement. She sees the old poster on the far wall, the silly one with the cat. With a thought, she crosses the room to it, and she peels it away at the corner. The old tape gives way with the slightest pressure. 

Underneath, right on the plaster, someone's scrawled in permanent marker: JACK MORRISON IS HOT!!! And under that, in blue pen: GROSS. Under that, in marker again: WE'RE ALL THINKING IT.

Her sigh turns into a laugh, and she rolls the poster back down. He'll be here soon; she'll see how much time has changed. It gives her heart. For now, she has mattresses to shove into place, and dusting to do; it's not bad, with how few people have been in here, but it's enough to run a spare cloth over.

"Hey," says the voice in her head.

Angela pauses. 

"Got them," Lena says from up the hall, but she raises her eyebrows when Angela turns to look at her and touches a finger to her communicator.

"Ah," Angela says, regretfully, "I'm afraid I'm getting a call. May I––?"

"Of course, of course," Lena waves her off. "Go on! I'll get started on these, huh?"

"My thanks," Angela replies, and she turns and hurries off.

"Hey," Reaper repeats.

She opens communication in turn.

"Yes, I hear you," she says, taking the long hallway out and into the warehouse. The lights are off, but the sunlight streams in through the open garages, casting everything in an orange glow. "Give me a moment to find some privacy."

"Are you still in Versailles?" he asks.

"I left yesterday," she says. "Talon pulled out and many of our patients were airlifted to neighbouring cities. As always, I think you should consider a more rewarding line of work –– perhaps one that does not involve causing so much suffering."

"Am I making things difficult for you?" Reaper asks.

She sighs.

"You know… maybe I can make your job easier. I'll propose that Talon introduce an extra bullet policy," Reaper replies. His voice is smooth, even through his synthetic voicebox; it murmurs in her ear like he's proposing a walk in the park. Angela feels her heart twist. "Make sure they're all _finished off_. It'd be less work for you."

She closes her eyes for a moment.

"If you're going to say things like that, I'm going to end this conversation now," she tells him.

"Don't," he says.

"Why shouldn't I?"

He exhales slowly, ventilating through his mask; she'd know that noise anywhere, the same way she knows his footfall and the exact rhythm of his guns. She's long gotten used to his sound in her head, but still, in the solitude of the warehouse, she still thinks to look behind her. Just in case.

"Well?" she prompts.

"Because I have questions," he says.

"Then you should make it quick," Angela says. "I don't have the patience for your miserable sense of humor right now, Reyes."

"Are you back with Overwatch?" he asks.

"No," she says. "I'm at my apartment."

"What are you up to?" he asks.

She knows he's trying to soften her up, get under her skin, but she can't dodge the question. She knows that. _He_ knows that.

"I just got back from the market with potatoes and cheese," she says. "I'm going to make tartiflette for dinner. Then I'm going to take a bath and perhaps watch a little television before going to bed."

They both know she's lying. Angela's always been middle of the road, neither a poor nor a skilled liar, but somehow they're both disappointed this time. Reaper is quiet for a moment, in what she's sure is a mild rage; she can hear his breath quicken a little, hear his clawed gloves tensing against some surface. He's predictable like that.

"Listen, Gabriel," she says. "I have to go."

"I doubt your place is big enough to fit a damn gorilla in it, _Mercy,_ " he sneers.

A sigh slips out of her like nothing. She _feels_ him breathe in again.

"You'd be surprised," she says. "The front door would be a tight squeeze, but the sitting room opens with double doors, and the rest is open to the kitchen. I could fit a six hundred pound gorilla in there for dinner, if he visited."

"It's strange that you've never invited me over," he says. "After all these years."

"We never had the time," she tells him.

"Sounds like you do right now."

She thinks about how he was here in Gibraltar a week ago, putting a gun to Winston. She thinks about how he saw Jack and Ana, used them to upset her, _threaten_ her. Angela lets those thoughts drift to the front of her mind, as easily as Reaper's breath. She could shudder.

"Where are you?" she asks.

"Madrid," he says. And, before she can ask: "No civillians involved in this one. You can enjoy a vacation for a few days. Go see a movie, baby. It's a _gift_."

Angela finds herself smiling a touch, despite herself. _Baby._ Her nose crinkles. She imagines, for a split second, that the man on the other side of this communiqué is a handsome older man with trigger-worn fingers and a manicured goatee. He has lovely brown skin and shrouds himself in neutral colours, _always_ neutral colours. He's teased her for years like this: _How come you never take me back to your place? Hiding something, baby? Bodies, maybe? You know, I don't spook easy._ She's taken by him. He _could_ be a good man. Rough around the edges, but good.

"Thank you," she says.

"You're welcome," he says.

A part of her believes he might be good again someday. Maybe she could fix him. It's a little cliché, isn't it? Her mother and father had always been pragmatic during her childhood, telling her about abusive relationships and their blistering red warning signs, and Angela had always taken heed. She's a very reasonable person too, after all. 

She just became somewhat fearless when she became a scientist who could rebuild a man from scratch, or stop time from ravaging the body, or even reverse death. There doesn't seem to be a point in feeling nervous around someone like him; she has enough time and patience for it.

She just needs him to meet her half way, and she knows he's not ready for it.

"I'll enjoy it," she says, finally. "But Gabriel, seriously. I think it's a good time for us to take another little break from each other."

He's wordless for a moment. She hears him grinding his teeth.

"I care about you very much," she says, to fill the silence, to ease him down before he blows. "I know you don't believe me when I say that, but it's true. I love you no less than I do Jack, and Ana, and Reinhardt, and everyone else. You know I only want what is best for you, especially when you don't. But I cannot be spending time, even just here or there, with men who deal in terror. Men who kill."

"Fine, be that way," he says, as if she hadn't said anything at all. As if she'd been cruel, or something! "I'll find you in a couple weeks, then."

"A little vacation isn't enough. You need to be a better man."

"Have I ever been _better_ than this?" It's a low, vexed hiss. Her gut curls.

"Yes."

"You just don't get it. This is–"

"Gabriel," she says, firmly. "When you are ready to let me take a serious look at you, and will allow me to _fix_ the remaining damage, then we will reconnect."

"You still think getting _blown up_ is the issue," he says. "You don't want to admit that––"

" _Gabriel_ ," she talks over him. "I won't hear it anymore. Until you are willing to address the _root_ of these issues, there is nothing I can do for you!"

There's a long pause where she feels the breath sucked out of him, and then there's an aggravated noise, low and gutteral. Then there's the crash of something, like a chair being upended. This goes on for a moment, and she stays pressed against the storage locker, heart pounding.

He snarls at her: "You know what, Doc? You'll _never_ touch me again!"

Angela ends the communication.

Just like that, his panting, his heaving, his voice –– it's all gone. Her heart still flutters and the mild adrenaline of conflict makes her want to tremble, too, but she just breathes a long sigh of relief. She could linger and feel sorry for both of them, but she has better things to do.

When she heads back to the barracks, Lena is gone and the beds are made, so she heads to the control room instead. Lena is there with Winston, and they're having a little back-and-forth of bad jokes. Lena rolls them out like nothing, one after the other, and Winston tries to keep up; he hasn't gotten any better with non sequiturs over the years. Angela smiles like she hasn't just been speaking with the man who tried to kill him a week ago, but it's just as well; neither Winston nor Lena look her way at first.

"How do you catch an elephant?" Lena asks.

"With a very large net," Winston suggests.

Lena doubles over in laughter, a genuine knee-slapper. "No!" she says. She spies Angela. "Do you know this one?"

"You hide in the tall grass," Angela says, "and make noises like a peanut."

Lena laughs so hard she snorts. Winston just looks confused, sitting back on his haunches and looking between them.

"Peanuts don't make sound," he says. "Well… I suppose they do, but the human voice box can't mimic crunching noises successfully, and an elephant's sense of smell would be unreliable––"

"It's not meant to make sense, big guy, it's just funny!"

Winston chuckles, confused.

"If you say so," he says.

"I do! Oi, Angela," Lena says, moving right along without skipping a beat. She looks at Angela with big sympathetic eyes, but she doesn't ask. "Maybe we could get your wings out of storage, huh? You looked glum earlier, I figured you needed a pick-me-up."

Angela feels an sudden rush of delight.

"I would love that," she says.

 

* * *

 

It takes all evening to dig the wings out. Once they do, she and Lena down a few beers and catch up after the lost years while working on calibration tests with Winston. They eat freeze-dried MREs for dinner that were kept in storage even after they all left this place a ghost town –– they're unappealing, but won't expire for another decade, so they're perfectly safe, Winston promises. They'll do groceries tomorrow, Lena promises. Lena gets the auto-pilot on a couple of the small jets operating again, and they see them out of the garage, en-route for Algiers and Düsseldorf and Toronto. When they see it again, it'll be carrying loved ones back from the dead. After that, it'll be running silent, invisible flights around the world, picking up more and more, until the barracks are full again.

When they finally go to bed in the small hours of the morning, a little tipsy but mostly just excited, and the barracks don't feel so bad with Lena's laughter bouncing off the walls. Angela settles down to sleep feeling good about her potential impending violation of the Petras Act. Lena snores through the night, wound around her blankets in her tiny pajama shorts. They both sleep late, hidden away from natural light, and Winston rouses them with breakfast –– more MREs, plus some bananas for good measure. The three of them spend all morning putting the command center back in working order, and making the little kitchenette suitable for real cooking.

Just after their lunch break, Lena looks to Angela and says: "Let's go test your wings."

Angela laughs and agrees.

Off they go.

Every step towards the rooftop feels like a step towards Mercy's true return, and it is a strange climb with the wings harnessed to her back. Even now, standing on the roof, she feels unbalanced, having grown used to their absense; she could almost tip backwards, particularly when the wings respond to little gestures. Even the sound of the metal alloy feathers spreading and falling feels strange. Nostalgic, but strange.

She's not sure if she's ready to fly –– not that it's easy to admit that to her comrades, who are thrilled to see it. They're so _high,_ even with Gibraltar's rocky face towering around them, far outstripping the industrial towers of the Watchpoint itself. Exposed pipework and structural supports rise into the air, casting long shadows across the grounds. The flagpole still flies Overwatch's flag, still pristine after years of dedicated maintance the Watchpoint's lonely caretaker. From the tallest platform, Angela can see everything. It still looks untouched by time.

"I can't believe we're starting from someplace so tall. You know it's been many years since I've operated them?" Angela says, warning.

"They passed all the safety checks," Winston says. He gives her a toothy grin. 

"I was thrilled to get back in the pilot's seat," Lena says. "I mean, not that I ever really left, but you know how _boring_ it is to fly commercial? It feels like a paddleboat compared to the babies we have here."

"Yes, but I was never fond of _flight_ ," Angela says. "Gliding, sure, and a careful controlled descent—"

"I never got that impression!" Winston says.

"It's easier to hide it amongst chaos," she says.

"I suppose so..."

He shifts behind her, his great hand resting under her wings –– his hand is so large that his thumb rests under her wings and his littlest finger is almost at her knees. He scoots her forward a mere inch.

"Need a little push?"

She feels as though he could accidentally push her over the precipice just by breathing, if he weren't so extraordinarily gentle about it.

"Oh!" Lena says. "You could just _toss_ her, Winston –– fling her right up there like you do me. The view would be amazing!"

"I think not," Angela laughs. "I need one of you to go where I can fly to you!"

"On it!" Lena announces. She runs to the edge of the roof and without the slightest trace of hesitation she leaps off. Angela is momentarily startled, prepared to jump after her out of instinct, but Lena blinks out of sight only to reappear (giggling!) a dozen feet down and across the chasm, and then she's gone _again_ , only to reappear safely on the lower roof.

"C'mon, Angela!"

"That's not what I had in mind!" Angela scolds to the wind, but all she hears in return is giggles. "Oh dear."

"It should be like..." Winston searches for the word, and then supplies: "Like riding a bicycle! I mean, I've personally _never_ ridden a bicycle, but perhaps _you_ have — I'm sure you haven't really lost it, Dr. Ziegler."

"Doc!" Lena cries. "What's the hold up?"

"Oh, wait a minute! There's the jet coming now," Winston says.

Angela looks up. Sure enough, one of Overwatch's old stealth jets is coming down from above, its cloaking devices shutting down so that the plane comes into proper sight. Angela's heart skips a beat.

"Is that…?"

"Probably," Winston says. "But it could be Van Schaik or Benaglia."

Angela runs the odds over in her mind, as if it would really make a difference whether they arrived now or a day from now. She watches the jet circle for a moment and then begins to descend towards the pad that Lena is on. It hovers precipitously as not to land on her, but Lena skips aside, leaping up the chasm again. She doesn't quite make it at first, but then she reappears right back where she started. She blinks up again, and this time she makes it back to them.

"Lot bigger going up than it is down!" she declares.

The three of them turn their eyes to the helipad, where two figures are climbing from the vehicle. There's Jack first, a broad figure with an unzipped blue coat and greying hair, and Ana behind him, long hair caught on the breeze. Angela feels the little buzz of her flight systems choosing who to lock onto, the little blue crosshairs blinking into her vision. Both of them look up at their welcoming party. Jack shouts something Angela doesn't hear.

Angela doesn't wait. 

She takes three running steps and leaps, and her wings fan out like beacons as she descends across the chasm, right into Jack Morrison's open arms.


	6. Dead Weight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaper, Sombra and Widowmaker have work to do in Madrid. Some of it is personal.

.

 

 

"She dump you or something?"

Reaper turns his head to Sombra and wills her to die on the spot by the hatred in his gaze alone. She continues to type, and she doesn't look at him, doesn't even acknowledge him. She is completely unaware that he is beaming his rage directly into the side of her skull, or _worse,_ she knows and doesn't _care_.

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, as level as he can manage.

"Then why are you in such a shit mood?" she asks. Her eyes are fixed on the little holographic screen. She's scrolling through data faster than he can register it, but she seems to have no trouble parsing it. "Every time you talk to her, you come back miserable."

"He's always miserable," Widowmaker comments. She's sitting in the window of their hotel room –– a hotel room, isn't _that_ funny? –– and looking down at the city below. She doesn't look terribly impressed, but then again she never looks impressed about anything.

"This one is particularly bad," Sombra says. "You think he's––ha! Got it."

Reaper looks back to her, just in time to see information disappear from the backside of the hologrammic screen. She keeps furiously stroking away at her keyboard, her long nails soundlessly penetrating their surfaces. 

" _What?_ "

"I just managed to decrypt more data from the hack from Gibraltar," she says. 

"Took you long enough," he says. 

"It would have been faster if you'd held him off longer," she retorts. "I wouldn't be working with corrupted data."

"What's done is done. Let me see."

She keeps stroking away for a second and then turns the screen to him with a swipe of her hand. Angela's face fills the screen, a three-quarter angle that makes her jaw look big. (He bets she shaved that down at least once since the photo was taken.)

"Why am I looking at _this_?" he says.

"I dunno, just thought you'd like to see your girlfriend."

"If she's my girlfriend, then I'm a _bad_ boyfriend," he replies. He decides that's better than resisting; she'd never let it go otherwise. She'll lose interest this way. He _hopes,_ anyway. If he thinks about Mercy any more, he's going to blind himself from rage.

Reaper scans over the data. It's still mostly corrupted, the legible content obscured by little glyphs. What he can read isn't anything he doesn't already know, anyway. She turns the screen back to herself. She's still feverishly typing away, devouring data like it's a gossip rag. When she glances at him, though, her smile fades a little around the edge, just for an instant. She even looks a little _put off._

"Tell me about it," she says. "I'd dump your lying ass."

Reaper keeps standing over her, completely still, and for a moment they just look at each other. She sits a little taller, even under his gaze, and he feels, with a sinking feeling, that she'd come across his file in the data.

"You know what? We have a mission to do," he says. "Get dressed."

"I'm working," she says, pointedly.

"That can wait. We have to leave _now_."

Sombra rolls her eyes and closes her terminal, the pink light vanishing into thin air. She gets up off the hotel bed and grabs the pile of her stuff off the end. Off to the bathroom she goes to get dressed.

He scowls to himself. He hopes she didn't see anything, but he won't know for sure if she did until she uses it against him.

Reaper sinks to sit on the end of the other unmade bed. The television is on, showing a ballet segment. The absurdity that three Talon agents, armed to the teeth and mostly in head to toe tactical gear, could be watching TV in a hotel room before heading out to assassinate a UN official does not go unnoticed to Reaper.

He looks to Widowmaker. He hates ballet, but he'd rather talk to her about it than watch it.

"Do you know this one?" Reaper asks. _This one_ being the ballet.

Widowmaker doesn't respond, though her eyes are fixed on the screen. Fine. No conversation for him, then.

Reaper thinks back to a moment well over a decade ago, where a few of them had slipped into empty seats at the Palais Garnier to see Gérard's wife, Amélie, perform. Not many people in Overwatch had approved of Gérard's choice to marry a woman young enough to be his daughter, much less actually liked Amélie; they knew almost nothing about her aside from the fact that she was a dancer. Amélie was _une danseuse étoile_ for the world's most prestigious dance company, a fact which Gérard repeated with reverence so many times that the term still sticks in Reaper's memory now, even if he can't remember the name of the ballet itself. And watching her dance, Reaper ––Gabriel, really –– had figured she'd at least _deserved_ some acclaim, despite his notable lack of experience with ballet, let alone what might make good one. Why not? She trained for it, and he could respect that.

Still boring to watch, though. He'd been happy to step out after the show, even tolerant about having to wait for Gérard to exit with Amélie, if it meant not sitting in the uncomfortable old theater seats anymore. Hell, better to shiver in the cold than be enveloped in the stuffy opera house for even another ten minutes. Jack and Angela had spoken in low, warm voices to pass the time, huddled in the shadow of the staircase where the snow couldn't quite reach them. They talked about the ballet, about how nice it was to be at the ballet, and other shit about the ballet, including Ana's refusal to attend because, well, she couldn't stand Amélie. Gabriel hadn't cared for any of it, because fifty-two hours prior, they'd been in the thick of a conflict. The nuance of the fucking ballet is lost on Gabriel, who still sees pulse munition flash behind his eyelids when he blinks.

And then there was the happy couple emerging from the Palais. Gérard, proud and straight-backed. Amélie, still wearing fake eyelashes longer than a finger's width, cheeks rosier than the cold could manage alone. The thick fur collar of her coat framed her pale face in a way that Gabriel thought it might just swallow her up entirely. She'd hung off Gérard's arm like she might have been blown right off her willowy legs, and she'd smiled gamely when Angela had immediately lavished her with praise. Gabe had felt exhausted. _Beautiful_ , he'd said, entirely out of obligation. _You're very talented. Can we get the hell out of here now?_

"Drinks, then?" Gérard had said, finally.

"Drinks," Jack had agreed on their behalf, rubbing his hands together for warmth or anticipation.

But that was a long time ago.

Now, Widowmaker is still on the window ledge, watching the dance program as passively as if it were an advertisement for anti-depressives or car insurance. Her posture is rigid, her jumpsuit open to reveal the cold, bony expanse of her collarbone. 

"Do you ever miss it?" he asks.

"Pardon?" she replies, hardly even blinking.

"Do _you_ miss _ballet?_ "

She looks at him now. It cuts through him, puts him on edge in a way that it shouldn't. He shouldn't have asked.

"No," she says, finally, and Reaper thinks, not for the first time, that she is basically a corpse –– that means something, coming from him.

Sombra scowls at them both as she emerges from the bathroom, fastening the buckles on her jacket.

"Hey, you heckle me to get ready but now you're both just sitting here watching TV?" she says, and she huffs heavily, blowing her bangs out of her face. "Honestly."

"Sombra," Reaper warns, but he stands.

Widowmaker turns off the television and moves to the window. Reaper watches her slip off on her zip line, imperceptible in the dark. When he turns back to Sombra, she's waving at him.

"See you at the point," she says, and she blinks away in purple light.

Reaper just billows away, dark smoke out the window and into the night. He decides, right then, as he moves above the traffic, that he hates this city already.

 

* * *

 

Keith A. Heitman is going to die tonight.

His crimes are negligible. In fact, if his assassination at the hands of some of Talon's finest agents were about the punishment of crime, then he would not be assassinated at all; instead, it'd be his bosses. Heitman is a low-ranking UN official. His job title is forgettable, his identity largely unknown to the general public. They'll care about him after his death, though, as people tend to do. Everyone loves a victim.

Heitman's death will be a warning to his higher ups –– the Secretary-General, the mediators, the delegates, and so on. That's about it, on Talon's end.

On Reaper's end, he has other plans. Madrid used to be the home of the United Nations' tourism agency. Now it houses the International Court of Justice's Petras division, for literally no other reason than the fact that it is close to Gibraltar, the last manned (or monkeyed) Watchpoint in the world. Madrid is a good place to be if he wants intel. Reaper likes to take advantage of those things, particularly when they fall right into his lap.

So murdering Heitman is going to be a distraction for Sombra to install bugs in the UN systems. The trade-off here is that Reaper has to share whatever information from it with Sombra, but that's fine. She likes information. He doesn't care if she has it, as long as he gets to keep an ear out. After all, if Overwatch is getting back together, the UN is most likely going to have solid intel on it. 

Reaper has an intrusive thought about Jack Morrison being back in action. Jack Morrison, heading Overwatch again. He's not sure if Jack would; with any luck, Reaper soured Jack on Overwatch irrepairably. Jack's not like Mercy, after all. Jack gets disillusioned _easy_.

His gut turns just thinking about Jack too much.

"Hey," Sombra says, snapping him from his thoughts. Good timing. "Widowmaker's in position. Now we just gotta wait for the motorcade to come through."

Reaper nods.

"You zoning out again?" Sombra asks.

"How do you even know?" Reaper replies.

"You look like you are," Sombra replies.

"That's because I wear a mask."

Sombra sighs.

"You know what I mean."

Reaper looks down over the city below. The only thing between him and a three-storey drop to the street is a short stone ledge and a decorative wrought-iron fence. He has one foot up on this ledge and he shifts his weight against it experimentally. He's going to have to jump down when the motorcade comes through.

"Fine, whatever," she says. "Be a dick about it."

He will, thank you very much.

He can see Widowmaker across the way, a slight figure stood between two cathedral-style windows. On first glance, she might just look like a column between them. She's completely still. She's so silent that the two young women smoking on the rooftop around the corner Widowmaker don't seem to notice she's there; they're so engrossed in their loud, animated conversation that they don't notice the assassin camped just fifteen feet from them.

He looks up the street. He can see their target car moving up the street; Sombra is controlling the traffic lights to choke the approach, time it perfectly. Four lanes of traffic and a major intersection on the corner of a landmark building. It'll be tight, getting out. It'll create enough mayhem that moving to Heitman's boss' office a few blocks away will be easy.

"Ten seconds," Sombra says.

"Right. As soon as I jump, you move out towards the next point," Reaper says.

"You don't need back-up or anything?" Sombra asks, in Spanish.

"No. Do your job," he replies, in English.

"Alright, then," Sombra says, clipped. " _Mentiroso_."

Reaper looks at her; she looks back at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips curved into a knowing smirk. Reaper doesn't have a response for her, because there is no time. He just lunges forward, over the fence. In mid-air, he's intangible, but when he lands, it's with a massive armor-plated boot going through the windshield of the car.

The driver inside screams. The car careens forward, the vehicles behind it crashing together from the sudden startle, and Reaper rides the momentum, one foot all the way down into the center console.

Reaper points his guns down and unloads.

 

* * *

 

"You got what you wanted," Widowmaker says over the commlink, her voice smooth and velvety. "The downtown core is locking down, traffic is blocked in all directions. Move now. I'll watch the rear."

"Good," Reaper replies. "Reaper out."

He and Sombra are already in motion, each in their own way; Reaper is a trail of smoke going over the building tops, Sombra is a roof-skipping with translocators, hurling them across the voids and then blinking across. Sirens float up from above, horns honk, and the din is almost deafening as people run and emergency vehicles scream out. They get one block down, and then another; Sombra opens a security door on the roof of the UN department building and Reaper slips in, and she follows suit.

It's quiet inside.

"Hey," Sombra says. "You _can_ speak Spanish, right?"

"Don't start," he says, looking back up towards the door. "Focus on the task at hand."

She rolls her eyes and then steps under his arm to reach a security keypad, and she hacks it in a flash. Reaper wanders up the hall to check for security. The hall is dark; after hours, the best security any building could have –– population –– is woefully absent.

"Alright," she says. "Cameras are offline."

"Thank you," he says, sharply, _pointedly_.

Widowmaker appears in the rooftop doorway. She pulls the door closed behind her and she takes the stairs down two at a time. She frowns as she falls into step with them. Reaper knows she isn't particularly interested in what they're doing, but she agrees to go along with it like it's nothing. It's like asking her to breathe –– it's just what she does. 

Sombra has their path mapped out already, so they start on it, the three of them moving in silence.

Reaper is looking forward to this. He thinks that with the right intel, _even if_ Overwatch tries for a resurrection, he will have every name on his list crossed off by Christmas. Some will be trickier than others –– some of them just don't seem to want to _stay_ dead –– but once he starts thinning their ranks again, Overwatch should permanently become a thing of the past.

Then he'll be _done._

"Wait," Sombra says, very suddenly.

"What?" Reaper replies, sharply, though he stops sharp. Widowmaker does as well.

"Don't move even an inch," Sombra hisses.

Reaper has the sudden concern that they're about to trip a security beam, or a wire of some sort, and he doesn't feel like getting blown up right now. Widowmaker glances aside at him, lips pursed. Sombra tiptoes up behind them, her footsteps almost soundless. She slowly, deliberately sidles between them.

"What is it?" Reaper asks.

Reaper feels her arm pass around his back, and she leans in closer, almost conspiratorially. Reaper tenses under her touch, and he sees Widowmaker almost recoil under the same; Sombra has her other arm around Widowmaker's waist, too. Sombra nods up at the security camera. Reaper tenses. All three of them gaze up at it.

Sombra says: "Say cheese!"

She violently pulls them both in against her, surprisingly strong considering her skinny arms. Reaper growls, startled, and Widowmaker shoves back at Sombra, hard.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Reaper snarls.

Sombra blinks out of his grip, invisible for the slightest second as she rolls out from under his arm. Reaper still claws at her, reaching to snag her by the collar, but he misses. But where Reaper is slow, Widowmaker is unceremoniously quick; she smacks Sombra upside the head with the butt of her rifle. Sombra yowls in pain, stumbling aside, but she straights up again quick enough, a hand to her jaw. It's purpling already, and it matches her outfit.

"Jesus fuck!" Sombra says. "Learn to take a joke; I'm the best friend you guys got."

" _No._ Can we get back to work now?" Reaper hisses.

Widowmaker walks on ahead. 

Their point is two hundred yards into the building. It'd be a quick walk if they were welcome guests, but even with Sombra hacking the security systems, they need to skirt certain paths. Most of the security guards are omnics –– who knew the UN was so cheap? –– and Sombra makes quick work of them. The one human they cross goes down easy, his head spinning on his shoulders. Reaper steps on him as he keeps walking.

When they step into the server room, bathed in blue light from the many cabinets of machinery, the rest of their work is cut out for them. Sombra will hack the system and they'll slip right back out like nothing, well before anyone is alerted. It's been an easy night, all things considered. 

Sombra crouches down by the first server cabinet and starts tapping away. Reaper lingers by the door, on guard, but he feels confident. This time tomorrow, information will start pouring in, and when Overwatch fucks up and goes public, he'll be able to track them down, one by one.

"What do you hope to even gain from this?" Widowmaker asks him, as if reading his mind.

"What does it matter to you?" he replies.

Widowmaker lifts her chin a touch, and the blue light of the servers illuminates her, makes her look even stranger than she usually does. 

"It doesn't," she says. "I'm just growing tired of this."

 _Fuck you,_ he wants to say. _Who cares if you're tired? We're all tired. I'm tired. Nobody enjoys doing this, but that's what you have to do._

Instead of that, however, he just settles on ignoring her. It's not worth his time to argue with her, because he will just get frustrated long before she does, and half the reason to argue with anyone at all is to feel vindicated by the other person being fucking unreasonable.

Sombra makes an annoyed expression.

"What is it?" Reaper asks, impatiently.

"There's security layers on this thing set up to prevent omnics from accessing it," she says. Reaper knows why; once upon a time, this was something he dealt with regularly. "No big deal, just a roadblock. I can just brute force it, it's just going to take a minute."

"So why are you even wasting my time telling me about it?" Reaper snaps.

" _You_ asked," she replies.

A second later, an EMP blankets the room. 

The pain is momentarily blinding. 

Instinctively, Reaper moves to wraith mode, but he doesn't end up going anywhere; there's a notable tug behind his shoulders, like a hook on his spine, and though his legs and arms become intangible and black smoke bleeds off him onto the air, he doesn't _move_. He's so started by this that he stops just as quickly as he starts. He starts moving, almost stumbling, and he just barely catches himself against a steel cabinet. 

He feels his heartbeat _pick up_ from its slow, nearly-resting pace. That alone makes him paranoid; his weak heart has to work more, which means––

_What the fuck just happened to him?_

Sombra lets out an annoyed noise, apparently too focused on work for the moment, but Widowmaker swivels to look at Reaper with the closest thing he's ever seen to incredulity. The both of them are completely unharmed, barely even phased. He's not ever sure why he isn't blinking alongside them. He stays where he is for a moment. 

"What the fuck?" Sombra remarks. "Well, I'm glad you asked, even if it was a shitty warning –– since when do EMPs bother you?"

Reaper pushes himself to stand straighter.

"You didn't tell me it was going to be an EMP," he snarls.

" _I didn't think it would bother you!_ " she retorts. "Mine don't!"

His entire body aches, like he's been electrocuted, but it's _different_. While Reaper is no stranger to pain, this is unusual, and he's sure of it. Teeth grit, he throws his guns down and grabs the nearest computer chair and angrily pulls it towards himself. It clatters over some wires and he yanks the wheels over and he _leans_ against it. His jaw hurts, but he steels himself through the pain and tries to cycle his cells, force them into regenerating. It doesn't work; there's a black, unresponsive nothing between his shoulder blades. He lets out a rough noise of frustration. Sombra and Widowmaker exchange a look.

"Are you… okay?" Sombra asks, sounding almost like she's going to _laugh._

"I'm fine."

Widowmaker makes a little noise under her breath. 

Sombra reaches for him, and Reaper is somewhat startled when little beams of purple light connect with him; he swings to swat her off of him, but it's too late. He feels a little all-body shiver, an electric sparkle. He tries to recycle his cells again, but nothing happens; nothing at all.

"Sombra!" he snarls.

"Relax," she says, "I'm just poking around for a second."

"Stop," he snaps, but there's not much he can do about it.

A frown drifts onto her face, slow and uneasy.

"You've got problems," she says. As if he didn't fucking _know_ that! "Normally when I take a poke at you –– not often, I _swear_ –– you light up like fuckin' Dorado. Hate to say it but now you got a dead spot."

" _What?_ "

"You've got a dead spot," she repeats.

"Well, I don't want your opinion!" Reaper snarls, and he swats at her again; she's a little too close for comfort. "Keep it to yourself, and _don't_ touch me."

"Then stop taking swings at me," she snaps back. "I'm just trying to help."

"Help by doing your job!" He slams a fist against the desk, so hard the monitor there trembles. He storms across the room just to burn off steam, even if it hurts, pain lancing through him. 

"Alright," Sombra says. He can hear the huff on her breath, or even the roll of her eyes. She leans back over the computer terminal to type, and the little _beep beep beep_ pisses him off almost half as much as the pain does. She keeps working on the install.

Widowmaker is still looking at him. He meets her gaze reluctantly.

"We shouldn't have come here," she says.

She's not wrong, but she sure as hell isn't right, either.

All he can do is repeat to himself that it'll be worth it.

 

* * *

 

Mission successful, they get back to their hotel room in the small hours of the morning. Widowmaker enters through the window again, but Reaper follows Sombra as she sneaks in through a side door, her pink-tipped fingers working their magic on the booking system, power locks and security cameras alike to keep him out of sight. Reaper feels wide awake by time the ordeal is through, which it something that can't seem to be said about either of his companions; probably because of his general lack of need for it, but also because he still feels fucked up. Being escorted through a hotel by a skinny hacker half his age doesn't help. Fucking freakshow.

Widowmaker takes the bathroom, probably to submerge herself in hot water for a while. She's prone to this. She doesn't bother asking if either of them need to use it first, which is more Sombra's problem than his own, but Reaper finds it rude anyway. Sombra just strips in the middle of the room, carelessly. Reaper settles for just turning away to kick off his boots and unbuckle his bandoliers and belts. He shucks off his coat, too. He feels Sombra's eyes on him as he does, but frankly, he doesn't care. He has a second skin made of compression. Sombra sees no more of his flesh than she usually does, just the cold, greying inches of his biceps, but he still takes off his things with his back to her. 

"You feeling any better?" she asks.

He isn't, so he ignores her. She doesn't try again.

When he finally turns around again, she's topless.

"Put a shirt on," Reaper growls.

Sombra rolls her eyes at him. To say she doesn't care is an understatement: she faces him fully, bare breasts perky in his face. He idly wonders how far she'd go to make a point, but he doesn't have anything to say to her that the cold, expressionless enamel of his mask doesn't already say.

"What? Does seeing boobs make you uncomfortable?"

He's not sure why she has to be this way, why she always has to have _something_ to prove. 

"It doesn't," he says. "Put on a damn shirt."

She scoffs, but she does, and then she flops back down on 'her' bed. She grabs the remote and turns on the TV; it's just infomercials. Worse, they're not even infomercials for humans. They're hawking some sort of miracle product for omnics that promises their parts won't degrade. Reaper can't wrap his head around that to save his life.

"You know, if she wasn't such a frigid bitch, I'd be fighting you to split a bed with her," Sombra says, lazily, casually. She nods her head towards Widowmaker's side of the bed, as if he didn't get that already. "That cute nose, those boobs. Those legs!"

If this were ten years ago and he had a title worth anything, Reaper might have taken her to task, tore her a new one for speaking that way about a fellow agent. He'd never liked _boy's club_ shit, even if he'd taken part in it plenty in his life, too. Who _didn't_ , at one point or another? Now, though, it seems fruitless to complain –– who gives a shit? Who in a terrorist organization gives a damn about comfort, or protocol? Talon doesn't have a fucking HR. Talon doesn't answer to the fucking UN, doesn't have to release documents and statistics publicly.

Besides: He's seen Widowmaker fuck. You just have to see the dead look in her eyes as she lays there and the idea of sharing a bed becomes about as bland as sharing a bed with a log. 

Besides: this body of _his_ can't fuck without assistance _anyway_.

"I guess she's not your type, if you like blondes," Sombra says, brushing it off, when his silence annoys her. "Anyway, you gonna sneak off tonight for another appointment with the Doc? Maybe she can take a look at you."

"She's back in Switzerland," he says, even if he doesn't believe that at all. "But even if she wasn't, no. I don't want to see her."

"Why not? She can't fix you up?"

"She _doesn't_ fix me up," he says. "Ever."

"What do you even do with her, then?" Sombra asks, skeptically. "Just rail her?"

Reaper turns his head to look at her, but she remains unfazed.

"Don't start," he says.

"You can't fault me for wondering. You think she has a thing for you? Seeing as she's probably doublecrossing Overwatch by talking to you."

"Overwatch is dead," Reaper replies. "She's not double-crossing anyone. Do you listen into our conversations?"

"No," she says. "Like I want to hear that? I hear enough of you all damn day."

 _She's_ the fucking liar. _Mentirosa._ He doesn't have anything to say to that.

"So what's the punishment?"

"For what?"

"For double-crossing Overwatch," she says.

"There wasn't one."

Maybe there should have been, but the UN had never been very good at that. That is the problem with government organizations; they're just loaded down with protocols and safety checks, and organizations with no clear order of business are free to do as they please, safe on the outside. It's like Rube Goldberg machines, with all these mechanisms to no useful end. If you want to hit the UN where it hurts, just violate their protocol in creative ways. That's that.

"How about Talon?"

"Be careful, Sombra," he warns her.

She snorts.

They both fall silent while the television drones on about some new body shaper for humans, some weight loss product –– _¡simplemente toma un batido antes de ir a dormir!_ –– and he feels Sombra's eyes on the side of his head, but he doesn't look at her. 

Widowmaker is out of the shower some time later, her skin steaming and _almost_ pink, near scalded. She turns off the lights wordlessly and slips into bed, and she lays on her back like she's going to be shipped off to the morgue. Reaper just stays where he is a moment longer, sat at the end of the bed, watching the light from the television shift across the room as the image changes.

"Well, goodnight," Sombra says, and she rolls over, facing away from him, but she opens up one of her little digital screens and starts tapping away. Reaper turns off the television, and the room falls darker still.

"Sombra," he says, voice low.

"Yeah, Gabe?" she replies.

He almost flinches, tensing his teeth together like he's been punched in the gut. For a moment he's quiet, but she doesn't tease him again. Somehow, her giving him space to respond is even worse than her relentless, constant pouncing. 

"How much did you read?" he asks.

Sombra's pause is even more tense. Reaper watches her in the dark, watches the pink-lit sliver of her face, indecipherable. Part of him feels like he should just kill her for knowing, just destroy her on the spot in case she leaks his secrets, but he knows it'll just be messy for him if he kills her. He knows she's smarter than revealing her hand without having a backup for it.

Sombra may be sneaky, but she's not stupid.

"Most of what Overwatch's databases had," she says. "The last note is that you got blown up and died in the HQ. Nothing after that."

Of course there wouldn't be; Reaper is sure of that. Nobody's been updating the database for years, and Mercy certainly wouldn't. Overwatch's agent profiles are snapshots of a time _before_ he became _this_. There's only one other person in the world who knows what he is.

"Hey," Sombra says, lower, more carefully. She switches to Spanish: "What the hell happened to you? You part Omnic?"

"No," he says. "God forbid."

She continues, still in Spanish: "Then what are you? Seriously."

"Are you just being more sober with me because you know who I am?" he asks, relenting and responding in turn. She watches him in the dark, and hand forked in her hair, her mouth pursed. She looks uncomfortable, even wound into the white duvet.

"Can you blame me? Before I read that, you were just a freak with clown shoulders and a grim reaper mask," she says, finally. "Now… well. I used to watch you on the TV when I was a kid, Reyes. Used to have a fuckin' hat just like yours."

Reaper exhales, long and slow. He wishes she hadn't said that.

Sombra adds: "I mean… what _is_ this?"

"It is what it is." 

He's not sure if he's saying that for her, or for him, but he makes sure it sounds final.

"If you say so," she says. She sounds like she thinks he's crazy, suddenly, like it's less a game now. There's a long pause between them, and then she turns off her pink screen and says, back to English: "Goodnight."

Any other night, he would slip out and go wandering, pace the streets. Now, though, Reaper sits alone in the dark until dawn. There isn't much more he can do.

 

* * *

 

There's still turmoil in the city in the morning, with the press waking up and the news reaching more of the population, but the three of them pay it no heed. In their little hotel room, things are mostly normal. Reaper sits there, now fully dressed, as the other two prepare. Sombra is uncharacteristically quiet; Widowmaker, more characteristically so. Reaper doesn't say anything either. The pain is gone now, but he knows the tiny nanomachines keeping him together are in discord, out of sync. He'd tried to cycle his cells a few times over the night, but nothing's changed.

It's not normal. It's making him anxious. 

The television is playing the news. Footage is switching between interviews with witnesses and press conference commentary and reporters rehashing things, over and over again. There are a few ugly photos of wrecked cars, and a few shots of crowds gathered around the barricaded-off crime scene, policemen waving others back. The Secretary-General's photo is put alongside a text comment. Everything looks chaotic. Good. There is nothing about the data breech. Better.

An image pops up of the moment of impact –– all three of them look at the television, at the shot of Reaper putting his foot through the windshield. There's a freeze-frame flash of light as he shoots directly into the driver's seat with one gun, and the passenger's with another. A car in the background is ramped up, poised to crash. 

"Look at you," Sombra remarks. "You'd think that car was parked, the way you're balancing on it."

Reaper feels a stab of pride.

"That's what a professional looks like," Widowmaker says.

Sombra snorts.

"Careful, don't let it go to his head," she says.

 _It already did a long time ago_ , Reaper could tell her, but he doesn't.

"Change of plan," Reaper says, instead. "I need to go see Mercy."

"Why?" Widowmaker says, clipped. She looks over him, unimpressed. "Talon has better resources than her."

He looks at her. Her skin is no longer scalded pink; it's back to that unnatural dead-girl colour, similar to his own but far more unnatural. Hers is chemical. Whatever Talon did to her to make her this way, they fucked her up. They fucked her up colossally, and there's no going back. Not that she cares –– Widowmaker doesn't care about anything –– but it's enough for him to steer clear of any medical attention Talon might offer.

He doesn't trust _anyone_ touching him or tinkering with him. He never has liked it, not after the Soldier Enhancement Program, and now it would be out of the question, if it didn't feel so dire –– he can't drop dead without completing his work, much as he'd sometimes like to. If there's something interfering with his abilities, with his functionality, then he has no choice but to allow _someone_ to take a look at it, regardless of trust.

"Sombra," he says. "I need you to confirm that Mercy is in Gibraltar."

"Why don't you just call her up?" she asks.

He's not about to admit he's been cut off. Sombra waits for a response and he doesn't give it to her. She sighs and starts typing away.

"You've truly become a liability,"  Widowmaker interjects, her long arms folded under her chest.

He wishes she was teasing, but she isn't. She can't.

 

 


	7. In The Dark

 

 

.

 

 

It's been a long time since he's seen the orange crags of Gibraltar. Longer still since he's been greeted so warmly. 

It surprises him. In that split second Angela glides to him, he feels like a young man again. When she's in his reach, boots touching down mere feet from him, he reaches and fits his hands to her waist. He lifts her, turns her –– she laughs at the apex of his lift, her wings fanning out. The sound of her wings spreading is a heady rush of nostalgia, and with it comes the first little stab of bitterness. By time he sets her on her feet again, half a second later, he feels older than ever, especially seeing her timeless face again.

"Jack!" she says, breathlessly happy. She kisses each cheek and then holds herself at arm's length to look at him. Her little up-down glance feels good. "You look wonderful!"

"I already tell him he looks good for his age," Ana says behind him, voice wry. "If even one more person says it, it will start going to his head."

"Nonsense," Angela says. "Handsome men deserve to hear it."

She lays her arms around his neck and embraces him close. Jack finds himself holding her a little gingerly, a little carefully, but she doesn't seem to notice.

"Still have tear ducts?" he teases, gruffly.

"Oh, shush," she tells him, and she pulls away. She greets Ana with just as much warmth, kissing each cheek twice, cupping Ana's face and caressing her worn old face with her thumbs. "Ana, I have missed you so much –– I don't even know what to say, we have so much to catch up on!"

"We do," Ana agrees. "I've missed you sorely, too."

Angela positively beams as she lets Ana pull away. She moves back and forth between them giddily; Jack thinks it's almost like she'd been the one isolated for years, but he supposes it's been that way for everyone on Overwatch. She slips her hand in his, and though he's momentarily uncomfortable, he winds his worn old fingers around hers and watches her smile for it.

Still, he's not a man easily moved by cheer anymore. When he looks up at Winston on the roof, and Tracer standing next to him, he feels his heart settle a little, his shoulders square.

Time to see what trouble is crawling back from the grave.

 

* * *

 

Seeing the state of affairs, Jack feels the urge to be pissed about a lot of things. Gibraltar feels like it's fallen into disrepair, between the sections that haven't been powered for years and the sections that Winston has gotten sloppy with. While he'd always worked primarily out of the Swiss HQ with Angela, he'd still taken a lot of pride in the Watchpoint here. He took a lot of pride in everything Overwatched touched.

Now, though, he can't summon up the will to care. Overwatch is dead and it likely won't be coming back, no matter what his allies –– former allies? –– hope for. It'll all be buried under rubble someday anyway, as soon as Winston dies of old age in a decade or so and the UN loses any reason to maintain the old place. It'll be bulldozed like the rest of the Watchpoints.

The only thing that pisses him off right now is that his chair is gone.

Jack used to have a particular chair in the Watchpoint command center that he liked to have at his computer, which is also gone. All of the chairs are the same standard-issue rolling office chair, but at some point a decade or two ago he'd gotten sick of having to jockey the little pneumatic gas lift to the right spot every time some jackass borrowed his. He'd taken a marker to the back of the seat and written across the patent leather: _S.C. JACK MORRISON_. (Some dimwit prankster had added the _'S THRONE_ later.) Nobody sat in it but him, ever, under any circumstances. 

Most of the team had followed suit in one way or another –– marker, stickers, taped-on name signs. Some people even used to haul their personal chairs across the damn compound just because they'd staked their claim on theirs. It had been stupid, but it had been normal, a little Overwatch inside joke. The Watchpoint had always been halfway between clubhouse and military barracks, but everyone having their own chairs was about as personalized as it got sometimes.

His eyes land on a chair with a Lakers sticker. The purple and yellow logo is faded, the edges a little raw. Jack decides he'll just use that chair. His throne is wherever the fuck he decides it is. He might not be Strike Commander anymore, but he's entitled to something, for everything that happened.

Jack drags it to the window and sits in the Lakers chair. He puts his feet up on the textured glass; the domed window makes the ocean vista look distorted, mottled.

Ana scoffs at him from across the room.

"For someone who argued against coming here," she says, "you're sure making yourself at home fast, Jack."

"I'm not at home," he says. "This place looks like hell. A man comes back to a former base of operations and expects to find it in halfway decent conditions. My damn chair is missing."

"You're fixating."

He gives her a look. The side of her mouth curls into a lopsided smile, but she lets it go in favour of surveying the place. It's been years longer for her; there were some renovations in that gap, Jack remembers, and the window he currently has his boots against was just plain squared-off plate glass when she vanished from their lives. 

Angela steps up behind him and puts both hands on his shoulders.

"Don't blame Winston," she says, in a low, conspiring voice, right near the shell of his ear. Winston is downstairs. "It's not his fault."

"How the hell isn't it his fault?" Jack asks, but he doesn't really want to know what goes on here anymore. Those old bad feelings are back with a vengeance.

"You left big shoes to fill," Angela says. "And he was _exiled_ here."

Angela straightens up, then, her fingers gliding to the junctures between his neck and shoulders. The pressure is light, massaging, as if she could soothe his concerns with that alone. _Too late,_ he thinks; he's seen the bulletholes riddling the floors and walls and ceilings. No amount of cleaning is going to hide that from him.

But he doesn't ask. As far as he's concerned, Overwatch is not his business. The only business he's here after is Reyes.

"You know, we should have drinks to celebrate while we wait for Lena to get back," Angela says. "I saw some bottles in the kitchen."

"Sounds good," Jack says. It's a good idea as any; maybe it can shake the constant nagging at the back of his head, the warning signs that he shouldn't be here. Too many ghosts, or something.

Off Angela goes. The second she is out of earshot, Ana says: "She looks young enough to be your daughter."

Jack snorts.

"It's a lot more obvious in person, isn't it," he says. "She looks good, though."

"Pah," Ana scoffs. "She looks like she served with my daughter instead of me."

"You're just jealous," he hums. "Maybe while we're here, she can fix those deep lines of yours, old lady."

"I don't think so," Ana says. "But perhaps a man as shallow as yourself would consider some hair plugs. Take care of that receding hairline."

He scrubs a hand through his hair, brushing the front up so it sticks up. He used to style it up with gel every damn day, when he was blond instead of grey. He doesn't think his hairline has changed any, but––

"Harsh," he says. "Maybe I will."

She laughs, short and stabbed, and she crosses the floor to the railing, the one that overlooks the lower segment of the room. Jack takes his feet off the glass as he turns his chair, looking around. There's a lot of cards and photographs that Winston has put everywhere, Christmas cards and birthday cards, wedding invitations and announcements, wish-you-were-heres –– he looks over them idly. Angela certainly hasn't aged a day; that Halloween photo could have been taken yesterday, for all he can tell. He gets up and circles the room to look at them all, at the letters and photos from Reinhardt, Torbjorn, even the lone one from Genji. The most recent photo of Angela is that witch one, and contemporary snapshots of them as a team, all of them younger and freer. There are no new photos of her. Had there been not been anyone around to take them?

Ana steps up behind him, and she reaches to put her finger on a photo of them. The two of them stand together, side by side, Ana's shoulders back and chin high, Jack's grin pearly-white and hands on his hips. Winston's awkward scrawl is underneath; "My New Leaders." It's dated to what Jack could guess was Winston's first day.

"If we're really back here, are we going to get matching coats again? I rather liked them, you know." Ana says. She stops the edge of her nail under the image of his popped collar. "No more of this, though."

"You're on fire today," Jack says. "How about no more of this?"

He gestures at her hair, at the single stubborn lock of hair sticking out of her beret. Ana snorts.

"Is that the worst you can do?"

"You two haven't changed at all, have you?" Angela says, somewhere behind them. Both turn. Angela breezes in with a bottle of vodka and a bottle of gin in one arm, and a dusty-looking can of seltzer water and cups in the other. She has a smile on her face.

"We might look old, but we're just the same, deep down," Ana says.

"I can see that," Angela says, as she sets up the bottles on the nearest desk and starts to unstack the cups. Red solo cups. They really must be young again, Jack thinks.

"I can pour it myself," he says.

"I have it," Angela says. "Still just gin and tonic, Jack?"

"Stiff ones are still his specialty," Ana pipes up.

Jack snorts. Angela laughs behind a hand; it's so warm and genuine that he feels a little less gloomy, between her and Ana. Angela pours the drinks, passes them around, and the three of them tip their cups together in a nameless cheers. They drink.

"Good," Jack says, gesturing with his cup.

For a minute, he decides to forget the future. Now is what he has.

 

* * *

 

When the carousing is all said and done, and they've caught each other up on their lives, and Lena returns from groceries and Winston from his afternoon nap, it's time to get back to work. Jack's not surprised when he is volunteered to turn on the generators. 

"Volun- _told_ , actually," Ana jokes. She taps him on the 'nose' of his tactical visor, and he waves her off. "You'll have better sight than any of us would, especially in the dark."

He has a joke for it too: "Everyone was waiting for a man to do the scary jobs for them, huh?"

Ana flicks him, right over the eyes; the hard _ping_ of her finger against his visor rings in his ears. Across the room, Angela sighs and shakes her head. Lena says, under her breath: "You wish, you old fart."

Set straight or not, he still gets a chuckle out of it. 

It takes them only a few minutes to get his tactical visor up and running again on the Watchpoint's comm links. Ana and Angela walk with him to the mouth of the dark staircase, Lena and Winston still in the command center. They have a path laid out to the generators, which are in the basement, four flights down and clear across the base; they're positioned deep enough in the mountains that it would take considerable attack by enemy forces to cripple the Watchpoint, but as it is, they're just a pain to get back on. But armed with a flashlight clipped to his belt and a crow bar in case of door trouble, Jack descends the stairs into the deeper base.

"Are you sure you don't want company?" Angela asks, hovering at the stairway. 

He waves her off. He's not afraid of ghosts.

His footsteps ring off each metal step and through the darkness. It's still an odd feeling, being back here. Jack knows these halls like the back of his band, even after all these years, but they feel different. His flashlight beam dances at his hip, but the erratic light doesn't bother him; it's just to provide enough light for the night vision on his tactical visor.

"First left at the bottom of the stairs, Morrison. We'll have this place up and running in no time," Lena says, a cheery voice in his ear.

"Affirmative."

Jack feels the impulse to be quiet; his vision through the mask is in shades of red, little target rings and notifications popping up as his gaze passes over objects of note. Security door, locked. Keypad, pressure sensitive, offline.

"Go down the left passage," Lena says in his ear. "There should be a— actually, can you just patch me through, visually?"

"No," Jack says. "Not enough light for the camera."

"Damn," Lena hums. "Well, fifty meters or so after that left, there should be a doorway to another staircase."

"Confirmed," Jack replies.

This deep into the building, the otherwise ever-present sound of the waves crashing vanishes, leaving him with only his footsteps and the occasional direction from Lena for company. 

At the bottom of the second staircase, he encounters a door. It's unlocked but he has to check it with his hip to get it open; quick work for a soldier of his calibre. He keeps on downstairs. A few more flights of stairs, a couple hundred more metres down.

"Alright, medbay should be on your right, up this corridor. If you cut through it, you can access the service hallway behind it. That should take you down to the generator room!"

The medbay door is open; the heavy metal panel had once been electronically operated, and given how goddamn heavy it must be, Jack's glad to not have to wedge it open with the crowbar. Jack moves right in only to get a quiet beep from his visor, the crosshairs shifting and lining up with a light source, small but bright. A communicator screen of some sort. 

He squints around it and his attention falls on a dark figure holding the light, only vaguely silhouetted by it. The figure has its back to him, broad shouldered and black hooded; it doesn't stir. Jack contemplates backing up quietly, radioing back to Lena, but he doesn't. There isn't time when the figure turns its head. 

What Jack immediately knew in his heart comes to life before him; Jack sees the white death mask with sunken black cheeks and cavernous eyes, and his jaw clenches involuntarily. 

Reyes. _Again._

For a moment their eyes lock, somehow, and Jack feels naked without his pulse rifle. Jack shifts his grip on the crowbar and reaches for his sidearm, the small pistol on the back of his belt. Reyes barely moves, but the light on his mask makes the sunken hollows longer, distorted. 

"You," Jack says.

"Wasn't expecting you so soon," Reyes says, rising to his feet.

His voice is low, metallic.

"Hostile, alarm red!" Jack barks, mostly to his communicator. He lines up the sidearm. Reyes pulls one of his own guns, scary fast; Jack fires but misses as Reyes careens right, out of the line of fire. 

Reyes moves abruptly — black smoke unfurls from him but his form remains human. His communicator clatters, and Jack's flashlight careens wildly as he moves, his night vision shifting as he moves. There's a fumble. Jack doesn't get a chance to line up for another shot, not when Reyes hits him like a sack of bricks. 

They hit the floor. The crowbar bounces somewhere with a loud clang. 

Jack takes a fist to his jaw. His visor frame holds firm but Jack feels the red plexiglass crack; he blinks as his vision goes from red night vision to darkness. Reyes is heavier, more heavily armored; Jack takes two more hits to the face before he manages to toss him, rolling them over in the dark. He tries to line up another shot but his flashlight goes somewhere in the fray with a _crunch,_ so his shot misses; the brief pulse of light illuminates Reyes in front of him. Just a body shot at best. _Damn._

Reyes hits the floor with a heaving gasp. Jack wastes no time pushing back, but it's dark –– he can't see anything suddenly –– he just feels Reyes under his knees and hands. It feels like flailing; a second punch doesn't connect. Reyes throws him off again. Jack hits the side of a counter and his body sings out in pain. He hears motion. Reyes is up, and he swings a kick, but it comes in late, too light.

They're both fucking blind.

Reyes starts laughing.

"Oh, this is the last thing I expected!" he says. The sound of his voicebox almost makes it a _purr._ "Didn't think you'd really come back here."

Jack crawls across the floor on his forearms, out of the way, and then he hauls himself to his feet. It's pitch black, and he has to keep a hand out ahead of him, the other still firmly gripping the pulse pistol.

"I'm guessing you're not here to rejoin!" Jack growls.

"Not exactly," Reyes says. "Have you ever been locked in the dark with a psychopath?"

He hasn't.

"Morrison?" Lena says in his ear, alarmed. "I'm picking up…"

Jack decides this isn't a fight he can win. It might not be one he'd immediately lose, either, in the dark, but for shitty environments to fight in, this one takes the cake. Jack starts moving backwards through the dark; he can feel Reyes in his vicinity, but can't pinpoint where. If he gets close eough to engage again, he's close enough to get destroyed in.

Jack gropes for the door. He knocks something off a countertop and the noise is loud.

"I'm in my element, Jack," Reyes says. "Are you running?"

Jack finds the door. He walks fast, a hand out ahead of him, the other hand on hte wall. He knows the hall is clear, but a sprint feels like a recipe for trouble. 

"Jack," Reyes calls. He sounds like he's enjoying himself. At least one of them is, the sick fuck.

Distance is all he can do right now.

 

* * *

 

He's traveled maybe five hundred meters and up one flight of stairs when he stops; he doesn't hear footfall behind him or anywhere. He slouches against a wall, still gripping his sidearm. He reaches to the earpiece of his visor; the cracked display doesn't even try to come on. Damn it.

"Heads up," he says.

"Status update?" Lena asks.

"Alive. Hostile encounter," he says. "Reyes is in the building."

"Are you safe?"

"Obviously," Jack says. "Now get me the hell out of here."

"Where are you?"

He keeps working his way down the hall with a hand on the wall, trying to find the last turn. Even if it powered on, the night vision in his visor is completely useless without the slightest bit of light to work with, and with the flashlight missing, he's completely blind. The only consolation is that Reyes is blind, too, but it's not much consolation when they're both stuck in the damn dark. 

Together.

If he keeps muttering into the communicator, Reyes is going to find him anyway.

"I don't know; lost my light and can't see anything," Jack adds. "Can you track where I am? I need directions out and I need them fast."

"I've got you. Keep heading in that direction," Lena replies. "We'll get you out and then figure out what to do about the lunatic in our basement, then?"

"When I have back-up," he stresses. "Patch Ana in."

"Roger that," Lena replies. There's a beat and she prompts: "Ana in."

"What is it?" Ana asks, immediately.

"Reyes," Jack says, rapidfire. He gropes his way down the hallway still, waiting for Lena's next direction. "He followed us here."

Ana breathes in sharply. Jack can relate. He feels, for the first time in months, a distinct shortness of breath; there's some strain in grappling with anyone from SEP.

"I lost him, but not for long," Jack says. "I'd have to get _very_ lucky to eliminate him."

"Are you feeling lucky?" Ana asks.

"No," he says, bluntly. 

"This right, Morrison, you're almost there," Lena adds. Jack moves.

"I'm coming down," Ana says.

"If you bring a light down here, he's going to find you in a heartbeat," Jack warns.

Ana doesn't reply. That's fine; he knows exactly how little she cares about the danger. She doesn't have half of their enhancements and she could still lick them any day of the week, Jack figures. The dark is big variable, though.

He finds the corner, so he turns. His hand passes over a display screen for a room title, but it's useless to him. You can't read a screen with your fingers.

"Nice. Keep going for twenty feet, then there's a stairwell."

"Angela wants to be patched in," Ana says.

"Do that," Jack says.

"Jack, he cannot pass through solid objects," Angela says, immediately. "Find cover and lock yourself in."

Jack curses under his breath.

"What do you expect me to do once I'm locked in?" he demands, but he makes a mental note anyway. Can't move through solid objects. Good to know, whatever the fuck Reyes is.

"I'll go down and talk to him," Angela says. "I can talk him down."

"What on earth makes you think you can talk him down?"

"He'll go easy on me," Angela says.

"I don't have time for this," Jack replies, pointedly, hushed. He can't imagine what the hell she could do for him that Ana can't right now, much less do _better_. "Stay where you are. Ana, get down here. We'll try to handle him."

There's a beat. Jack hears something and turns his head sharply to the sound of footsteps. He hears Reaper laugh.

"Angela is headed back to the command center," Ana says. "I'm on my way."

"Up the stairs, Jack," Lena says.

"I'm trying," Jack says. He gropes around.

"Sombra," Reaper says –– apparently not to him. "Take out their communicators."

Jack takes the stairs two at a time, even in the dark, putting Reaper behind him. He counts as he goes — two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, one, landing. Two, four, six, eight–– he stumbles over something, he's not sure what, but he catches himself and keeps going –– ten, twelve, stumble. He's on the next floor.

"Lena," he says. Nothing. "Damnit!"

Communicators down. Back to square one, but a little bit closer to the doors. Jack keeps moving, turning left to balance the directions he's turned in –– the right direction for the door he'd entered in, though useless if he can't find the next staircase. He wracks his brain; he was probably just in the west stairwell. If that's the case, the right staircase is fifty feet up the hall, but in complete darkness, it's hard to judge how far that is.

He's tempted to holler for Ana, in hopes that she'd hear him, but he can hear Reaper behind him, though distantly, his footsteps echoing up through the stairwell behind him. 

Fuck.

And then Reyes is talking again, but clearly not to him. His voice is low, angry:

_"Now_ you want to talk?"

Jack pauses midstep and turns back towards the sound.

"What did you think I'd do?"

Jack creeps along the wall, footsteps slow and careful. He has nothing to line his sidearm with, but he keeps it out anyway, his finger alongside the guard and ready to move to the trigger.

"Get Morrison out of here now, and _you_ get down here."

Jack fingers the door to the stairwell with one hand and he leans into that doorway.

"What makes you think I care how you do it? Just do it."

He hears Reyes ventilate hard through his mask and hiss. There's footsteps, heavy and fearless. Jack shifts against the doorframe, quietly.

"Or else I'll kill him, that's what."

Jack hears Reyes move close, suddenly; perhaps he could reach out and touch him. This close, it would be easy to shoot him, but difficult to ensue a clean, fight-ending shot –– that feels more imperative than ever, now.

"Mercy, if you hang up on me again––argh!!"

Jack moves back sharply, and even if he can't see, he feels Reyes move quickly in anger; his claws make a sound off the metal paneling on the walls that makes Jack's molars ache. Reyes snarls like an animal.

"What do you mean, pulling out?" he snaps. To someone else, now?

Confident that Reyes's back is to him, Jack moves after him.

"Go to the museum alone," Reaper snarls. "I'll wait here as long as I have to."

A light appears at the end of the hall; it blinds Jack as it waves into view, and he sees the vague cowled figure of Ana behind it. He realizes a second later, that he is visible, at the exact moment that Reaper realizes he's there. Jack books it. 

"In!" he barks.

She dips back into her stairwell, light cutting around the wall. Jack sprints towards her, boots flying over the metal flooring. Reaper comes up hot and fast on his heels; Jack isn't sure if he is even armed anymore.

"The door!" Jack hollers, as he careens around the corner. Ana is waiting with the emergency door handle, and she gets it rolling as he slips in. Jack throws his weight against it, too, and together they slam it shut, right in Reaper's face.

They listen to him the door on the other side, snarling. He punches the door, hard enough that it trembles, but it doesn't even come close to giving. 

"He's like a goddamn animal," Jack snaps, clutching the handle.

Reaper doesn't linger long, though. They hear him storming away again, boots loud on the floor. Jack would be relieved if he wasn't panting, leaning against the door. He looks at Ana next to him, at her grit teeth, her hardened eye.

"They're pulling out," Jack says. "I heard him say it on the communicator. And he was talking to _Mercy_."

Ana frowns. She doesn't seem sure of what to say at that.

"Well, Winston's gone after the Talon jet circling us," Ana says, finally. "They'll have a hard time getting Reyes off the ground if they can't land."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Lena chimes in as the communicator crackles back to life, sounding as close to pissed as she ever does. "They've got some of Winston's translocators!"

"What?" Jack snaps.

"They're already on the jet!"

Jack pulls off his visor and hurls it against the stairs in frustration.

 

* * *

 

He climbs the stairs two at a time, footfall heavy and angry. Ana has to take extra steps to keep up; he hears her trying behind him. As soon as he makes the door and gets into the open courtyard, he breaks into a run, even if the light feels blinding in comparison. Ana certainly doesn't keep up with that.

"I'm sure there's an explanation for this," she calls after him. "Jack!"

He leaves her behind. Heart pounding, he sprints across the courtyard. It's almost sunset now. 

"What happened in there?" Lena calls from the stairs. Jack ignores her; he runs right by her and she steps back to not get jostled. 

He slows a bit when he enters the cave mouth, but only marginally. He takes the last bit of stairs with long, powerful strides, and when he rounds the corner into the command center, his eyes pass over Winston's hulking form and land on Angela on the other side of the room.

"Get over here," he barks, gesturing at the floor at his feet.

"What's wrong?" she asks, confused.

She doesn't move to him, so he keeps moving to her. Confusion flickers on her face. He reaches out to seize her arm, but it doesn't connect; Winston moves at lightning speed and blocks his path with an arm. Jack is surprised to find himself shoved back, careening to the side to stay on his feet, putting a hand out to catch himself against a desk –– surprise which is echoed on Angela's face over Winston's furry arm. Jack comes back immediately, right back to position, but Winston stands firm.

"Watch yourself," Winston growls.

"Stand down, soldier," Jack snaps, off the cuff. "That's an order!"

"This is my home," Winston replies. "And _you_ aren't commander anymore."

" _Your_ ––"

"Winston, _Jack_ ," Angela says, pushing against Winston's hand, as if getting between them could ever be a good idea. "Stop! What's going on?"

But Winston relents, dropping his hand, and Jack closes the distance between himself and her. He doesn't grab her; instead, he gets right up in her face. This close, he can see the poreless sheen on her face, the subtle _sparkle_ of it. Her blue eyes widen and she rocks back on her heels. He exales his rage and she breathes it in.

"Jack," she says, lifting a hand and placing it squarely in the middle of his chest. She pushes back, gently, but he doesn't budge.

"You were talking to Reyes," Jack says. It comes out low and gutteral. "He asked you to get me out of there and for you to go in instead. What the hell is going on?"

Winston looks at Angela, suddenly, his anger dissipating. Lena says something under her breath behind him, and he hears Ana move behind him. 

"Give her space, Jack," she orders.

Jack stays where he is for a moment, hovering. Angela remains firm, resolute, but he can see her wearing a little at the edges. Ana repeats herself, harder. He steps back, turns away for a mere moment, _pacing._

Ana says, far warmer, far more _concerned_ but no less firm: "Angela. Were you talking to Reyes?"

Jack watches Angela's apprehension slip to something more relenting. She folds her hands in front of her and she nods, seriously.

"I can explain," she says.

" _You've been talking to Reyes?_ " Jack repeats.

She nods again, carefully this time.

"Not by choice," she says. "But yes."

_Christ._

"Why?" Jack demands. 

"He has medical issues. If he's here now, it's because he needs something from me."

Jack looks at Ana. Ana is watching Angela, concern running deep in the lines of her face. Ana moves up the few steps to where Angela is standing, Winston at her side. Jack watches Ana extend a hand to Angela, who takes it with an apologetic look.

"For how long?" Ana asks.

"Since the HQ went down," Angela replies, and Jack feels his chest tighten. _That long?_ She continues: "Sometimes he'll disappear on me for a month or two, sometimes as long as six… but he visists me often, particularly lately."

"That would have been nice to know the _second_ we landed, Angela," Jack snaps. "You should have informed us _immediately_."

"Perhaps so, but I didn't imagine he would show up so soon, especially because I cut off communication with him again when I arrived in Gibraltar," Angela says. "You can't fault me for wanting to reconnect with old friends before worrying about that, Jack. What kind of greeting would that have been?"

"A prudent one, given he obviously knew you were here," Jack says. "And now he knows Ana and I are here!"

"He'd know anyone was here. We recalled because of Reaper," Winston interjects. 

"Reaper?" Jack repeats. He feels oddly dumbfounded. " _Reaper?_ "

"That's what he calls himself now," Angela explains.

"That's ridiculous."

"It doesn't matter, Jack," Ana says, smooth, firm. "Angela. Jack told you what happened to him. But what happened to Reyes?"

Angela hesitates. It nettles Jack like nothing else, but she looks between them all with such careful poise. She'd never been one to indulge in angry words, perfectly content to force people to match her tone.

"Jack was in better condition than Gabriel, after the blast," she says. "Much better condition –– Gabriel was so mangled that even I had the thought that he was too far gone to save. Normal rules of triage would dictate that I focus on you, Jack, but…"

Jack remembers the moment he first came to, groggy from heavy sedation. He remembers staring at the ceiling tiles, motionless, listening to the cloud of nurses talk in the background. He imagines, for a painful second, what it might have been like to have Angela leaning over him instead. She had always been there in his previous hospital stints, rare as they were.

Angela breathes deeply now.

"I didn't want to _give up_ on him, and I thought you stood a good chance of survival without me, so I got on his evac. I threw myself into saving his life. And… well. I spent all these years regretting not having been able to save you." She smiles, suddenly, though it's sad; she reaches for his hand but he doesn't take it. "I'm eternally grateful that my judgement was clear, that you lived, apparently without much wear."

"You still picked the wrong man," Jack says. Her smile vanishes quickly as it came. It feels arrogant to say it just like that, but fuck it. 

"I should have cared more for you," she agrees. "But it wouldn't have mattered. It wasn't my choice for long; Overwatch was suspended immediately. The UN wasn't about to leave me responsible for a rogue agent turned terrorist. The only involvement they allowed me before long was to turn over my research. It was a hard decision."

Jack crosses the room, pacing. Of course she did. Of _course_ she did.

"You gave them your research?"

"Yes," she says. "And they destroyed him with it. Everything he is –– the smoke, the movement, the voice."

"You've seen under his mask, then," Ana says. Jack doesn't like the small note of horror that has crept into her voice.

Angela nods.

"I'm sorry if you did," she says. "It's... deeply unpleasant."

Jack doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to care about what's happened to Gabriel's face. Reyes' face.

Reaper's face.

"So what was this procedure?" Jack demands.

"It's… well. It was experimental. There's a process we have called _restriction digest_. It's a procedure that cleaves DNA into fragments. We've known about them for almost a hundred years now, but shortly before the accident, I isolated an enzyme cutting site that would theoretically allow one to include nanotechnology _in_ the molecular cloning process. The nanotechnology mimics foreign DNA to become a vector, and then clones itself into the resulting replicating cells. Reyes was made a _test subject_ in this process; his entire body is now a host organism to nanotech DNA."

Jack doesn't know much about restriction enzymes, nor does he care. He glances aside at Ana, whose old face is lined with concern. Lena frowns, too. Winston is the only one who seems even remotely unphased by this explanation, but his expression is hardly comforting.

"In English," Jack orders. "I want to know I'm understanding this right."

"Well, think about Genji. Genji is largely machine, save for what little was salvaged of his body," she says, one hand out, and then she raises the other. "On the other hand, I just have some internal nano _prosthetics_ , you could call them; they keep my cells running optimally while being minimally invasive, let alone visible. Reaper is a–– well, a _middle_ step between Genji and I. Instead of pairing his cells with nanotechnology that directs them for optimal conditions, or replacing much of his cells with complex machinery, they attempted to make his cells _themselves_ a form of nanotechnology. He's completely biotic, in a sense, but he can control his cells as if they're machines."

"So what does that mean?"

"For us, or for him?"

" _Both,_ " Jack says.

Angela pauses for a moment, brows knitted together in thought. Jack folds his arms across his chest –– god, that smarts –– and he waits, chin up and shoulders squared. 

"For him, well, the prognosis is not good," she admits. "It was only ever an experiment, and it was never tested on any live subject. What he has is deeply flawed as a result."

"I imagine that's good news for us," he says.

Angela frowns, just for a flicker. Ana turns her head just slightly and meets Jack's eyes for a second, calculated and hard. She remains silent, her mouth fixed in a hard line. She knows exactly what he is thinking, because she's thinking it too.

"If our aim is his death, yes," Angela says. "You can it's starting to fail just by looking at his skin; he's losing capillary circulation. His new vector DNA could be shutting down processes it deems unnecessary, because it doesn't understand what processes a human needs to survive. It will eventually be the death of him."

_Good,_ Jack thinks. Could spare him the trouble.

"How fast will it kill him?" Ana asks.

"It's difficult to say. I haven't managed to get a good look at him in a long time," she says, heavily. _She pities him_ , Jack realizes. "I suspect he wouldn't know what to do even if he wanted to –– he doesn't even know the extent of what happened to him."

"And you haven't told him?"

"I've tried to explain it," she says. "I know I could fix him, but he doesn't trust me to. He's afraid of medical procedures, Jack… and I don't really blame him for that much."

Jack scoffs. With everything they went through in SEP, shitty as it was, you'd think Reyes would appreciate the fact that he could be put back together. They'd both survived; griping over the means of survival seems petty to him, particularly when Angela could solve his problems. That's Reyes, though. Difficult. Difficult to a fault. He'd rather be a martyr, a victim of Overwatch rather than getting on with his life.

_Fucking hypocrite,_ Jack thinks. He paces, his stride getting longer.

"Well," Lena says, finally. "At least we have a better idea of what we're dealing with."

"Some good that will do for us," Jack retorts. "I'm not here for Overwatch, or anything that happened before yesterday. I'm here to put Reyes down for good. Period. How do we kill him, if his own body won't get the job done?"

Winston hesitates. Lena nods, though very reluctantly. But Angela's expression freezes up entirely, as he expected. She stands there stiffly, arms folded, rolling the inside of her lip against her teeth. Her eyes are almost vacant for a moment, lost in thought. But what's there to think about? Jack knows what's right. Jack knows what they owe to the world, and that's to rid of it of this fucking menace.

"Jack," Ana says. "You need to cool off before we can have this conversation."

Jack meets her eye. Ana's perceptiveness would be doting and motherly if it weren't the same trait that made her a peerless markswoman –– he just can't argue, looking at her, and he feels rattled for it. He understands it. He feels it, the blood pounding in his ears. He looks at Ana and rules himself calm.

"Go sit outside," she says. "Clear your head."

He wants to tell her off, but she's his second-in-command, his best friend, the single most faithful and dedicated person he has. If he doubts her judgement, he has nothing.

So he goes, and he doesn't come back all night.

 

* * *

 

 

Jack wakes up in the small hours of the morning feeling like he's got a hundred pounds on his chest. For several minutes he lays there, disoriented, unable to move. It takes some effort to draw breath into his lungs. He doesn't know where he is. 

He reaches out to the side of his bed and gropes until he can find and slam the tap light, instantly flooding his little slice of the room in dim yellow light. And then, eyes landing on the poster across from his bed, he confirms it for himself. The kitten says _hang in there_. Right: he's still in Gibraltar.

Jack forces himself to sit up.

No one else in the room has stirred, even with the light. Lena is still snoring, face planted in her pillow. Angela's bed is empty, but only because she's moved one over to share with Ana. The two of them are fast asleep, pressed together on the single bed, limbs tangled and faces close. Jack turns the light off again before he disturbs them, and he walks out in the dark. He used to break up that kind of nonsense, but there doesn't seem to be a point now. It would be petty.

Barefoot, he walks up to the hall and out the door into the yard. He stands on the walkway with his toes hanging over the edge, breathing deeply until he feels himself relax. He doesn't; the thrum of gunfire and grappling in the dark beats alive in him. One encounter was enough to leave him feeling off his game, two is enough to make him feel impotent. Should have killed him the first time. Should have killed him the other week.

Should have killed him yesterday.

_Would-a, coulda-, should-a._

"You went right to bed without dinner," Angela says, behind him. "Are you alright?"

He turns to look at her and lets out a long exhale. She's standing in the doorway with her arms folded, wrapped in a cotton housecoat, but he can still see a sliver of thigh through the gap. She's barefoot, too. Her expression is troubled. He's not sure what the hell to say to her at first, so he settles on not answering it at all. He looks back towards the dirt yard. She waits.

"You know, the way you greeted me on the helipad, I thought you'd be climbing in with _me_ ," he says, finally.

"Not after the way you snapped at me," she says.

"You're supposed to be the forgiving one."

"That's not fair, Jack," she says. There's the slightest little purse of her lips, smiling disbelief, but she's being serious. 

Probably true, though. He wishes he had something to do with his hands, but he doesn't smoke. He sits down on the boardwalk edge, letting his feet dangle.

"Well, I've gotten grumpy in my old age," he says, and that pries a single _ha_ out from under her breath. "C'mere and sit down."

She sighs, but she does. She sits very close, shoulder against his, despite the ample space on the walkway. It's oddly comforting, even if it feels like something they're decades too old for, but she's too forgiving, he decides. He was angry with her, and rightfully so, but she's still an old friend. It's shitty to make Reyes _her_ fault.

"Hey," he says. "You've been okay?"

She shrugs a little, tilts her head side to side. So-so.

"I won't pretend it's been wonderful," she says. The little curve of her mouth doesn't look right. "But I've managed."

There's another long silence between them. It's been such a long time, and yet it feels as though there isn't much to talk about. Not with the ghost lingering over their heads.

"So you've been seeing Reyes," he says. 

She pauses, long and dangerous, and Jack watches her face fall a little more every second that passes.

"I'm not proud of having kept it from you at first, Jack," she says. "But I've done what I've needed to do to survive. I'm a little easier to bully than Reinhardt or Torbjorn." 

"Angela," he says. He's not sure what to say after that. She covers her face with both hands, and he reaches to squeeze her knee. "Hey. Sit up straight. Keep it together; we have to talk about this."

She does, and she nods with a deep breath.

"I don't know what to tell you, Jack," she says. "Where do I even start?"

"The beginning," he says. "What happened after you turned over the research? How does it go from him being a pile of parts to…"

He gestures vaguely.

"I did stay with him for his recovery," she admits. "I practically set up vigil at his bedside, whenever I could, for months. And for a time he was doing well, and it _seemed_ like he could recover, but he started refusing treatment."

"Why?"

"I don't know," she says. She's miserable, the words popping out of her like she'd burst trying to keep them in. "Jack, I tried my best but I couldn't do much about it –– I was so wrapped up in legal issues that I couldn't be there all the time, I couldn't hold his hand through it all. He _needed_ more help and I failed him on that."

"That's not on you, though," Jack says. "You weren't the only doctor in Overwatch."

"No, but I was the last person who would have been his friend through it," she replies, pointedly. Her voice waivers, and for a moment she sounds much older, more _natural_.  "If I could have kept a better eye on his recovery, maybe he wouldn't have been this way."

And she laughs suddenly, bitterly: "I must look ridiculous. I haven't–– I haven't told anyone I was involved in anything to do with him, after the HQ. Not even Reinhardt, you know, they made him retire during the stress of the prosecutions, and I just couldn't bring myself to add one more thing to everyone's plates. It's been killing me, Jack."

Jack lets out a long exhale. They would have understood. Reinhardt and Torbjorn would have, Lena would have. Genji, too, he really would have understood. But he gets it. Sort of. He can't talk, given all he's hid.

"I'm sorry, Angela," he says. "I'm sorry no one else could be there. I really am."

He puts his arm back around her and she presses her face into her hands, leaning right into the crook of his arm. She breathes in deeply, ragged, but she steels herself well. Good soldier, or as close as she'd ever be to one. Head calm under pressure. Jack keeps that arm around her, fingers running through hair, tucking a loose lock behind her ear.

"We all did what we had to," she says. "I'm just sorry I couldn't do more at the time, that's all."

_Story of your life,_ Jack figures. _Run yourself ragged just to make sure every nick and cut is mended._

He thinks of Reyes in the basement, hunched over, a great monstrous black figure without a real face. Was he talking to her then? If she were there in person, would Angela have seen that moment differently? Would she have seen shoulders sagging as he'd leant against the countertop, someone almost despondent, in need of care? He can't imagine extending that kind of compassion, not after everything that had happened. Not for an instant.

Angela wipes at her eyes, sitting up out of his arm, and the question that's been nagging him since the basement skirmish bubbles up.

"Are you still trying to help him now?"

She doesn't reply for a moment. He's sure she knows what he wants to hear, and he does want a quick and practical _no_. He wants a DNR signed off for Gabriel Reyes, permission to put the fucker down when the opportunity comes, but no. She just looks fucking _guilty._ God.

"He's my patient," she says.

As if that might explain it away.

Jack somehow doubts that Reyes –– _Reaper?_ –– is dropping in just to stick his tongue out and say _ahhh_. She rests her chin in her hand and looks out into the sunrise, eyes misted over. _Too emotional_ , he thinks. Too _invested_. She always has been, when death is concerned.

"Angela," Jack says, "you know the man is a psychopath."

She frowns suddenly.

"He's not a psychopath," she says. She doesn't sound as reluctant now, but she does choose her words carefully. "He is unstable and aggressive, yes. He's certainly violent. But his body is breaking down on him –– anyone would have stability issues when faced with that kind of trauma."

He frowns, too.

"So what?" he says.

"So he can still be reasoned with," she says.

"Why would you reason with an unstable, aggressive and violent _terrorist_? He calls himself _Reaper_ and dresses the part."

"Because he's still Gabriel Reyes, much as he argues otherwise," Angela replies. "He's not so different than he was before. He's not _irrational_. He has never been delusional, he has never been a liar, or a thrill-seeker, or remorseless. He has never indicated any emotional poverty, never been irresponsible, or––"

"Angela," he says, interrupting. "I don't care about the diagnostic critera of a psychopath."

She opens her mouth to respond but he holds up a hand, a single, warning finger, and she swallows her words with her breath. Her eyes narrow.

"Don't try to convince me on this," he continues. "It really just sounds like he's gotten in your head. He's _always_ been this way, just not towards _us_. He's manipulating you."

She pushes his hand out of her face.

"What does that even mean?" Angela says, emboldened. _Defensive._ "You'd really explain away everything he's ever done as manipulative, the good and the bad? He was once a member of Overwatch. He once lectured us with _his_ lofty ideals, he protected the innocent, he safeguarded our lives _with his own_ –– was all of that manipulation to you?"

"Angela," Jack warns.

"You loved him once, Jack," Angela says.

"Don't," Jack says, louder.

"Just as he loved you!"

" _Shut your mouth!_ "

There's a silence between them, punctated by the sound of the shores down below the cliff, the cry of sea birds looking for breakfast over the water. She swallows hard; he practically hears it as he watches the muscle in her neck flex.

"Don't _ever_ say that again," he warns her. "Ever."

"Fine," she says. "But don't lecture me on his behaviour when I've been in his regular company for several years."

"Angela," he says, firmly. "He's tried to kill a number of us now, multiple times in a week, and I'm guessing you're included in that."

He knows it's true, without a doubt; he can see that on her face, too, in the way it falls when she exhales again, the way she breaks his gaze. It's true. It's absolutely true. He moves to his feet to stand over her.

"That's not going to fly anymore," he says. "Our first priority is eliminating him, because right now he's a threat to not just us, but innocent people –– here, Versailles, Madrid. Even if we're _both_ right about him, taking him out would be a mercy kill. I think you know that."

She looks away for a moment. Jack rests his weight back on his heels, and in her silence, the thoughts intrude. _Sure_. Maybe he loved Reyes once. Maybe at one point, as younger men, the two of them might have changed history for the better, instead of leaving it a miserable, disgraced sloppile. But that was always a maybe, and it never panned out. Now, he thinks of Reyes sticking that shot gun right in his spine, thinks of laying in the fucking dirt, trying to shake off the black-out that left Ana fighting Reyes alone. He thinks of Reaper dogging Angela across the world for years. He thinks of Reaper murdering innocent people alongside his enemies. 

Who cares if they'd loved once? They'd never be that way again.

Angela shakes her head, slowly, eyes closed.

"I understand, Jack," she says.

He gives her a long, hard look. She rises to her feet, too.

"I understand, even if I'm sorry that we can't agree," Angela says, quietly. "I can concede that if you killed him, it _would_ be for the greater good. I can see the lives weighed against his. I've known it for years."

"Good," he says.

Her watches a flicker of tension in her, but she exhales again, long and slow.

"Still," she adds, voice firm. "You must respect that we are both doing our jobs. Unfortunately for us all, I'm a physician first."

"And he is your patient," Jack says. "I know."

She nods.

"I don't have the luxury of seeing a suffering man and condemning him, regardless of how awful he is," she says. "Especially when that's my technology. He's my monster, in a way, and I'm-–" She smiles, but it's bitter. "I'm responsible for his suffering."

"Jesus," Jack says.

"Melodramatic, isn't it?"

"A little," he says, but he doesn't know whether he wants to be angry with her or for her, so he settles for feeling fucking impotent. "But I get it."

She reaches for his hand. He lets her take it. Her skin has that ethereal sheen to it, ageless, especially against his worn knuckles. She clasps that hand between both of hers, almost close to her breast.

"I understand if you hate him," she says. "Sometimes I hate him, too. But he's still Gabriel in my heart. He may have never managed to make me a soldier, but he taught me to survive, to excel in the field –– to be a combat medic! He was my commander, for a time, just as he was yours. He was a good man."

Jack doesn't have anything to say to that. She favours her words for a moment and then she drops her voice a little.

"Do you remember that night where Reyes came to the UN headquarters––" (He does remember that night, he remembers it painfully clear, he remembers the blood trickling down his face.) "––to convince me to join Overwatch? And you were there too, and we went out for drinks after?"

(Oh. That night, too.)

"I do," he says.

 "I think about that night a lot," she says, exhaustion heavy on her voice.

He's not sure what to say. They both stand there for a moment, drained, and she lets his hand drop away from hers. She folds her housecoat a little tighter and turns away. She walks back into the building, and he watches the back of her blonde head go, her footsteps quiet on the steel flooring.

Gabriel Reyes is dead, he reminds himself.

But he shouldn't have had to remind himself at all.


	8. Tired, Lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another double chapter; didn't have a clean spot to break it into two!

.

 

 

 

"Time to get up, Angela."

Angela opens her eyes groggily and sits up on one arm. The lights are on, hazy yellow, and the long row of cots seems lonelier when she's the only one occupying them. Ana looms over her, and Angela blinks sleepily up at her old friend. A smile passes over her. Oh yes. Ana's here. And alive.

What a pleasant thing, to wake to a beloved face.

"Did I oversleep?" she asks.

"Is noon oversleeping?" Ana asks.

Angela laughs, head falling momentarily against the mattress, and then she pushes herself up to sit properly.

"Tremendously," she says. "I must have slept through my alarms."

"Quite the feat, if they're going off in your head," Ana says.

"Then consider it wondrous one."

Ana chuckles and sits on the edge of the bed — her bed, actually. Her lovely long hair is loosely plaited over one shoulder, and despite the summer, she's shrouded in a draped, oversized cardigan. She reaches to Angela and squeezes her hand; it is very easy to forget that she and Ana had been in a spat around the time where Ana vanished from their lives, "dead." Funny, how second chances change things.

"Jack said you talked a bit more last night," Ana says, dropping Angela from pleasant thoughts.

"Oh," Angela says. Her smiles flickers but persists. "We did! It wasn't a conversation I enjoyed having, but I imagine he told you that already."

Ana nods. Angela had known that going into her talk with Jack; there are no secrets between those two, or any friendships of their caliber. (But what does that say about her friendship with Jack, or Gabriel?) For a moment the two of them sit together, and then Angela turns to better face Ana.

"I know that I should have told you when you arrived," Angela says. "I'm so very sorry, Ana, it put us all in danger."

"I forgave you already," Ana says, smoothly. She squeezes her hand, firmly, encouragingly. " _None_ of us can throw stones about secrets. My concerns now are for you, my dear friend."

Angela drops her eyes and smiles.

"There isn't much to be concerned for now," she says. "I know you and Jack are here for Reaper. You'll put him out of his misery before long, and I will move on."

Ana's brows knit.

"Angela," she says. "We came to Gibraltar to find out what you knew. We didn't expect to have him led back to us in the process, much less discover the truth of what happened to him. A lot has changed in the past day."

Hmm.

"Now you are as much a part of putting him down as we are."

Angela pauses, Ana's eye on the side of her face. She sits up a little straighter, pulling her hands from Ana's, and she rearranges the hem of her pajamas, as if that matters at all right now. Ana just waits, and when Angela doesn't feel like she has an answer to that––

"Jack said you agreed it was the right course of action," Ana says. "Didn't you?"

"I did," she says.

She _did._

Ana reaches for her and finds her chin, and she leans in to kiss her on the corner of her mouth, soft and sweet.

"I'm sorry it has to be this way," Ana says, close at hand. "You've changed so little over the past years, Angela. You still fear death, don't you?"

Angela nods a little too fervently. She feels like she could be crying, but she just doesn't have it in her. Ana pulls her in, and Angela rests against her. It's motherly, but in a strange way. Angela knows that's Ana's instinct, to be mother to them all, even Jack, even Gabe, even _her,_ but she hasn't been a daughter in a long time.

She hurts, and she hurts a great deal. It feels as though her heart might just fail, a thousand tiny nanites panicking alongside the rest of her. She does truly fear death.

So why does she feel like a sham, undeserving of this upset?

 

 

* * *

 

 

Angela takes her time dressing. She gets a clean turtleneck and leggings from her suitcase and takes time to do her hair a little less messily than usual, brushing her bangs in the right direction. She puts on make-up for the first time in a week, stroking on mascara until her lashes are long and dark. It's petty but it feels like she has a bit of control. She decides that if she hasn't dropped dead in a week, she'll do something nice for herself and replace her eyelashes with something permanently dark.

When she finally joins the rest of the team in the command center, it's quiet. Jack is sitting in Reyes' old chair, feet up squarely on the floor, a newspaper open between his hands. The headline on the front says TERRORIST ATTACK IN MADRID LEAVES 12 DEAD. When Jack looks up to see her standing there, the hard line of his mouth spells out Reaper's looming death. Her complicity in it. 

"Good morning," Angela says, pleasant nonetheless.

She steps up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders once more; he doesn't react save to turn the page, even when she stoops to kiss his temple. The little silver hairs around his hairline tickle her chin. Yesterday, he'd twirled her upon her landing in his arms, and today he shoulders off her presence with a consternation almost completely foreign to her.

"Oh, Jack," Ana says, scowling. "Do _not_ take your sour mood out on Angela."

Angela lingers long enough for Jack to lower his paper and reach for one of her hands. He pats it, heavy and firm.

"Good morning," Jack replies, gruffly, and then he picks up the paper again. He grumbles under his breath: "I think I have a right to be pissed."

"Your quarrel is with Reaper," Ana reminds him.

Angela just drifts away again, right to the coffee machine. She's going to need a strong one. As she pours herself a mug, she feels the relatively quiet of the command center and she looks around.

"Where is Lena?" Angela asks. She squints up at Winston's loft. "And Winston?"

"Lena and Winston headed out an hour ago."

" _Winston_ left Gibraltar?"

Angela feels a little unexpected shiver. Winston leaving Gibraltar; that alone is a clear violation of the Petras Act. You can't hide a sapient gorilla for long almost anywhere in the world. If Overwatch really is returning, then it will be very, very soon, and they won't have Gibraltar as a base –– a problem, considering there are still agents making arrangements to come back. Where will they all rendezvous if Gibraltar is compromised?

"Why?" she asks.

Jack gets up and crosses the room, toast in hand. He leans over the computer and takes a big bite, coming away with a smear of peanut butter on his upper lip. He looks down at it, as if regretful of having put it on his toast at all, and then goes back to the keyboard. He pulls up some files.

"Intercepted Talon cables," he says, finally, as Angela approaches and leans against the desk's edge. "They're going to your place."

"My place?" she repeats.

"In ye old _Confoederatio Helvetica_ ," he says, gruffly. She's not sure if he's treating her like an idiot to be mean or playful; maybe a little of both. And even after all those years living out of the Swiss Headquarters, and his accent is profoundly American when he wraps his tongue around her languages. "You still live there, yeah?"

"Yes, but in Basel," she says.

"They're going to Zurich. To the Overwatch Museum. Set to attack in a couple days."

"That seems to me the last place Reaper would want to go," Angela says.

"I think they're going after the gauntlet," Ana says. "Remember that old thing?"

"It put a hole in the roof of the Hagia Sofia," Angela replies. "I thought they would be going to tip off Overwatch's return. Talon is bound to want to turn the public against us before we even get started."

If they get started.

Jack laughs, low and bitter.

"If Reyes tells the world who I am, I'll do more than just kill him," he says.

Angela looks at her coffee, mouth in a hard line. He doesn't continue, but he doesn't apologize either. Why would he? 

"Well, the world will know shortly," Ana says. "Winston and Tracer are going to be ready to intervene — and after Giza, Versailles and Madrid, maybe a more obvious approach will drive them off."

"Why not you two?" Angela asks. 

"Because if Talon really does want to make this an unmasking, I'd rather they 'unmask' two of the most _publicly recognized_ living _ex-_ members of _Overwatch_ ," Jack says, ticking traits off his fingers. "The last thing we need is the public baying after my blood again."

Angela feels a tick of sympathy. While most of the members of Overwatch had spent the Petras years in retirement, obscurity, exile or hiding, a few of them had maintained a level of public notoriety. She'd found shelter in trotting around the world, where reporters were busier with human carnage than a single doctor amongst the crowd. Lena had taken a hundred different jobs, never anywhere long enough to maintain notoriety. Torbjörn had taken up design work in a furniture factory. Hell, some members of their ranks had taken up bartending, children's animation, and burger flipping. 

It never could have been that way for Jack Morrison.

Jack Morrison would have been dragged into the streets and mauled, people had loathed him so much by the end.

"Why don't _I_ meet them in Switzerland?" Angela suggests.

"Because it'd be irresponsible for me to put you in harm's way," Jack says. He's talking like a leader again, which does not go unnoticed to any of them. And then, carefully: "I want you to flush him out for me, but I don't want to do it on a world stage."

Angela feels Ana's eye on her, and though Jack looks straight ahead of him with the studiousness of any commander at war, she feels his attention on her like nothing else. _Fair enough,_ she thinks. She's already absorbed that this will be her role in things. This is her part to play, going forward.

Recovery is going to be out of the question, soon. Soon it'll just be about pain management. She won't kill him herself, but she certainly will try to make his passing as easy as possible.

She wonders when she became such a sick person to agree to this so easily. A terrible doctor, certainly.

"I think I could do it safely," she says. "Flush him out in Switzerland, I mean." 

"How?"

Angela pauses, favouring her words for a moment. Jack watches her, squinting a little; he feels like an old man but he doesn't quite look it yet, hovering somewhere in between her and Ana. Handsome, sophisticated. She wonders if Gabriel could look that way, too, if she could have fixed him sooner.

She pulls up a chair properly and sits across from Jack. He sits forward in his seat.

"Reaper wants to see my place. He's been joking about it for a while," she says. "I live in a quiet neighbourhood in Brausebad; I could definitely lure him there, and there wouldn't be much trouble."

"That's real close to civillians," Jack warns.

"I know," she says. "But it doesn't need to be a fight. I don't even need you and Ana there. But––"

"That's out of the question," Jack says, immediately.

"Let's hear her out," Ana interjects.

"I need a _promise_ before I can explain," Angela says, firmly.

Both of them look at her. Ana pulls up a seat closer to them, two fingers wound into the handle of her tea cup and her lips pursed. Jack looks to Ana, but she doesn't look at him, so Jack just moves his eyes right back to Angela.

"I want Ana to kill him," Angela says. "Quickly. _Instantly_."

She sees something twitch in Jack's jaw. He leans back in his seat, shaking his head.

"No," he says. "You know that's not how these things work, Angela. If I see a shot, I'm going to take it. He's too dangerous for anyone to take his _comfort_ into account."

"Jack," Angela says, a little firmer. "I won't be involved in this if it's going to be a vehicle for revenge."

Jack puts down his coffee mug, his expression darkening, but he doesn't move. He doesn't say anything. Ana looks at him sharply and then looks back to Angela.

"We're going to have a problem with that idea in the first place, Angela," Ana says. "My aim is not what it used to be, especially when talented agents like Reyes are involved. And more than that, my biotic rifle isn't good for clean kills. It's the tradeoff of the modifications _you_ helped with."

Angela's heart sinks. Reaper would be happier dead; she knows the kind of revenge he wants will never satisfy him, even if he's convinced of it. No revenge could. Condemning him to a slow death at Jack's furious hands seems like torture, though.

"Do we not have access to another rifle for you?" Angela asks. 

Ana and Jack share another look.

"It's been harder and harder to raid compounds over the years, Angela," Jack says. "We just don't have time to try, and nothing but Overwatch-grade weaponry is going to cut it against a soldier like him."

Angela is sure her face is falling.

"I just want it to be quick," she says.

"I know," Ana says. She reaches for Angela's hand, but Angela doesn't give it this time. "The problem is we can't promise that. Combat is messy. You know that."

Angela does. She knows it better than most, having been the one to reassemble men and women time and time again. Many people owe their lives to the messiness of combat, the bullet spray that could have killed them instead of maimed them, the rocket fire that could have splattered their limbs instead of dangled them. And that, she can handle –– it's death that makes saving lives so difficult.

Is it really so much to ask for a headshot? A clean strike through the brainstem, an instant strike followed by a painless death?

Besides, if it was clean enough, then maybe, just maybe, she could try again. A second death, a second chance. She'd done well with Genji, and he had been little more than a head when he'd come into her care. And Genji, he loves himself. Even after everything, he buried himself in the snows and cold stone of Nepal and found peace, and if Reaper had just the slightly modicum of self-preservation, he could have found his own harmony and embraced himself, instead of becoming this.

"I know," Angela says, finally. "I know."

"So let's hear the plan," Jack says.

It isn't a negotiation. Angela realizes that.

"I can install a kill switch in him," she says. "It'll kill the nanomachines off as they reach the end of a natural cell's cycle. We can engage him in a safe place where I can turn them off and give you enough of an advantage to finish him off swiftly. With mercy."

Jack doesn't look too merciful. In fact, Angela knows his strategic thinking is in overdrive, contemplating how he could just let Reaper die and not risk an engagement at all, in war with his desire to personally see Reaper's tyranny ended. But they both know that wouldn't work anyway, even if Jack didn't have his pride –– a man on a timer is far more dangerous than a man with all the time in the world.

"You said last night he doesn't trust medical," Jack says. "How are you going to get a kill switch in him?"

"He still needs medical attention," Angela says. "I can convince him to let me fix him, and I'll install it while I do that. He won't know."

The three of them are silent for a moment. Angela looks down into her coffee; it feels soured now, so she sets it down on the table and pushes it away from herself, out of reach. Jack is slouched low in his seat, knees wide, arms slung across the armrests like he's in a throne rather than an old office chair. Ana looks pensieve.

"And what happens if he figures out what you're doing?" Ana asks.

"Then I will dial 117 and pray the policemen arrive on their bicycles before he can empty eight shells," Angela says. No one laughs, not even her. "Unless you two want to come and risk turning Brausebad into a war zone."

Jack sighs.

"But you're fine with this plan?" Angela asks.

"It's not ideal," he says. "But it's necessary. SEP's enhancements are good but whatever you did to him…"

He shakes his head and trails. He doesn't sound pleased about the thought in the slightest. Angela wants to gently remind him who put her in a position to be inventing technology that could be applied untested, but what would it serve?

"He wiped you in the dirt twice in seven minutes," Ana says. "And then he had you running in the dark."

Jack glowers.

"It's the truth, Jack," Ana says. "Don't sugar-coat it."

"Fine," he says. "I haven't held my own in the past few encounters I've had with him. If he were crippled, I'd have a better advantage."

"He had a hand in training all of us," Angela says. "It stands to reason he would know all of our weaknesses."

Jack nods.

"Well, we have our plan," Ana says. "It's a good start. By this time next week, if we're that much closer to putting Reyes at peace, we'll have made good headway."

Angela nods, as does Jack. For another moment they're just silent, each grieving in their own way, and Angela thinks for an instant that this is the kind of plan that Reaper had stalked her in order to prevent. This is the kind of plan that got Overwatch in trouble in the first place, that created all the sanctions and legal actions and lawsuits to keep her from practicing.

But how can it be helped, if it's for the greater good? It'll save lives. It'll save her life and the lives of her people ten times over. In the grand scheme of things, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives from Talon's growing influence on the world.

"And Angela," Jack says, firmly. Angela looks to him, and he looks just the slightest bit more open in that moment. He reaches a thick and calloused hand across the table to her, and she hesitates to take it, but she does. 

His eyes are very blue, and as sincere as they come.

"Whatever happened," he says, "you don't owe him anything. If you're serious about joining back up with Overwatch and making something of it… then Reyes has to go."

"I know," she says.

 _Do you?_ say his eyes. _There's no redemption for someone who doesn't show remorse._ She knows that. She knows that very well.

"Don't think I want to leave the past behind me too, Jack," she says.

"Sure," he says. She's not sure if he believes her. Those movie-star good looks are useful for more than just looking at.

She pulls her hand from his and smiles.

"I'm going to pack and head back to my apartment, then," she says. "With any luck, I'll have him drawn out in no time."

"We'll head to Switzerland with you," Jack says. "You don't have to go alone."

"I've been alone for years, Jack," Angela says, smiling. "I'll be fine."

 

* * *

 

Her apartment is just how she left it weeks ago, save the addition of storage tags on all her things. She's not so sure if that's necessary now, but she doesn't have the energy to think about it. 

She squeezes through to the kitchen and finds a note on her fridge from her assistant Sophie; it was cleaned out a week ago, evidently in preparation for her upcoming decision whether to go rogue or not, but Sophie has since been by again to restock with a little cream, butter and bread. There are coffee grounds already in the coffeemaker and water in the tank. She taps the brew button and then moves to touch screen mounted on the wall to check her home line messages.

There's two new messages. One's a recorded message from her bank inquiring about a credit card she cancelled. The other's from Mr. Müller, her liaison with the United Nations. He wants to talk. He sounds stressed. She calls him back but gets his secretary, so she lets him know she's going to be home for the next few weeks and to call her at his convenience. By time she's done, the coffeepot has rumbled out a mug's worth.

She takes her coffee on her balcony, leant against the railing with the mug cradled between both hands. The street below is quiet and largely empty until her neighbours pull into the driveway and get out, chatting merrily. One spots her and after a look akin to having seen a ghost, she waves. Angela waves back. The woman says something to her husband, and he looks up and waves too. Angela feels a brief, flickering urge to say a proper hello, but she doesn't. They don't either. They go inside. Another neighbourhood fellow that Angela doesn't remember the name of heads down the street, walking his big black dog. They pass behind a black car idling in the street. A couple kids come out of the apartment lobby, one dribbling a basketball. Everyone seems to be busy. She thinks she might take a bicycle ride tonight, while the weather is nice.

When she's actually in Brausebad, a little bicycle ride gets her just about anywhere she needs to go, from grocery store to theater to park. On a nice day, she likes to ride through Shuetzenmattepark, under the chestnut trees. In the spring, there are crocuses. In the summer, the sound of children splashing in the paddling pool, or screaming as they run through the park. In the fall, there's wonderful cider in the parkcafe. Winter empties the place out a fair bit more at most hours of the day, save for joggers braving the crisp weather. Angela likes Basel. It's beautiful.  It's also home to some of Switzerland's best health care centers, as well as several of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world. They would all hire Dr. Angela Ziegler in a heartbeat, if only she were legally permitted to work in any research capacity.

"Dr. Ziegler? Is that you?"

Angela looks down. One of the younger neighbours is looking up at her, the son of the couple downstairs.

"Hello, Anthony," she calls back.

"I saw you on the news the other day," Anthony says. "It's really cool, what you do."

She rocks the coffee mug between her hands and looks down at the young man, a smile on her face that she doesn't quite feel. Just days ago, she flew on golden wings, and just this morning, she kissed Ana and Jack's warm old faces and promised to deliver them a sacrifice.

"Thank you," she says. "Have you now started school for the semester?"

"In two weeks," he says. "Mother and father are driving me to Bern next week, but we are going on a last summer trip after that."

"How lovely," she says. "I took a short trip down through Madrid after finishing up in Versailles, you know. The cork trees are beautiful this time of year."

Anthony nods. For a beat there's silence between them, just the bounce of the basketball up the street, a bark of someone's dog in a neighbouring apartment. Angela's smile lingers, polite. She thinks it would be less wear on her facial muscles if she just affixed them into a smile by default.

"Thank you again for the reference letter," he says. He sounds bashful, suddenly. "I don't think I would have been accepted without it."

"Not at all, it was my pleasure," she says. In truth, she'd mostly allowed his parents to court her for a reference so that she would be invited to dinner a handful of times, thus lessening the number of evenings spent eating alone in her crammed kitchen. She'll probably get another invite, now that she's back in town, but she won't be able to relish it. She intends to be gone again as soon as she has notice.

"Well, see you, Dr. Ziegler," Anthony says, and he waves and gets on his bicycle.

She waves and watches him go, and her eyes fall on the apartment across the street, the third level of a three-storey building. There are no curtains, and even during the day, she can see it is empty inside. Those neighbours — what were their names again? –– must have moved while she was gone.

Angela takes a deep sip of coffee and goes back inside.

 

* * *

 

Her communicator beeps while she's in the shower.

She knows who it is; she doesn't have to worry about the sound of water running, the odd intimacy of answering a call while standing under the showerhead. She contemplates not answering anyway; if they have a missed connection, then she doesn't have to do this. She can tell Commander Morrison that it's not working.

The communicator beeps again. Does she dare? No, she knows what she has to do and where her responsibilities lie.

She allows the call.

"Hey," Reaper says. "Are you still in Gibraltar?"

"No, I'm at my apartment," she says. "Don't I get a _how are you?"_

He makes a frustrated noise. She leans against the tile, blinking back the water running down off her forehead, and for a moment, he's quiet too. She listens to him ventilate.

"I'm dropping by," he says, finally.

It's imperceptible. A warning or a threat?

"What for?" she asks.

He exhales, harder, slower –– "I need you to fix something."

"I can do that," she says. "How close are you?"

No response. He closes the connection. Fine. She takes her time washing her hair out, the water running so hot it could almost scald her. It's not comforting anymore, though. 

The doorbell rings. She realizes almost immediately that she's left her housecoat in Gibraltar, but there's not much she can do about it. Angela wraps herself in a towel, and she drips all over the floor as she makes her way to the door. With one hand wound into the terrycloth, she peers through the peephole.

Reaper is standing there, looking like a fish out of water in his long black coat and menacing hood. For a moment, Angela leans against that door, watching him. He doesn't move, doesn't even sway on the spot. She moves her free hand to the lock but doesn't turn it.

He rings the doorbell again.

"I know you're there," he says, finally. "Open up or I'll start knocking on neighbours' doors."

She sighs and unlocks the door. She opens it maybe six inches and he puts his hand out in the frame as if she might try to close it again, but she doesn't. For a moment she looks at him and he 'looks' at her, his broad frame occupying her entire line of sight through the door. The tile floor of her entranceway is wet under her feet; she's dripping.

"Come in before someone sees you," she says, finally, standing back. She tucks herself behind the door as she opens it. "You don't need to threaten people on my account, you know."

"I know," he says, "but it makes you move faster."

He's lingers in the doorway, so close that she bumps him with the door as she closes it. He barely even notices. She locks it behind him.

Reaper stands there, apparently looking around her apartment. Angela stands there too, a hand still firmly on her towel. She's starting to feel cold now, far from the steam of the shower. Reaper looks at her, expressionless as always, and then back into the apartment.

"You couldn't fit a six hundred pound gorilla in here," he says, finally. "I'd be surprised if you could even fit a two hundred pound one. Are you moving or something?"

 _By this_ , of course, he means her boxes. They're stacked to the ceiling in every room, lining the walls and protruding out into the center to make narrow walkways from one end of the apartment to the other: a single two-foot path from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom, that's it. Hoaders have had homes more spacious. 

Angela swallows hard.

"No," she says.

"This is ridiculous."

The boxes bulge towards the center, as if the whole room is folding in on them. Even Reaper looks dwarfed in a peculiar way, uncomfortable. He looks like he thinks they might topple on him at any moment, but Angela is so used to them that she'd barely noticed until he'd taken that tone with her. He looks hesitant to enter, now.

The thought of having startled him is what prompts her to move.

"Come in," she says, almost chiding. "Don't mind all this. I'm not here much."

"I imagined it'd be as clinical as the rest of you," he says. "Spartan, not cluttered. As _bland_ as the rest of you. A life lived elsewhere. I didn't expect… this."

Nobody expects this.

"There's more space to sit in my room," she says, finally. "Come with him."

Angela squeezes back around him to head to the bedroom, beckoning him to follow. When he doesn't move, she reaches out for his hand. He doesn't take it, but he does start moving, sideways. His clunky boots graze a box at the toe and he looks down to see where he's walking.

"I don't usually have guests," she admits. She feels mildly embarrassed, anyway. She squeezes past another outcropping of boxes and into the bedroom, where she leaves him to his own devices in favour of dressing. She picks a tank top and lounge pants from her wardrobe.

"Why?" He asks. She supposes a politer question might have been _what is this_ or _are you okay_ , but _why_ is all he asks.

"It's my parents things," she says. "Wait here. I'm going to get dressed."

"Jesus," he says. That's all he says.

She slips into the master bathroom and closes the door behind her, but she leaves it just slightly ajar. She listens to him move around her bedroom, wordless, as she towels off her hair and dresses.

Reaper finally nudges the door open a few inches more. His metal knuckledusters sound dull against the wood. He watches her as she gives her hair one last wring; it still sticks wetly to her shoulders when she gives up on any attempt at looking presentable. Her apartment's a mess. She's a mess. Her _life_ is a mess.

"Why don't you get rid of some of this crap?" he asks. "Are you kidding me with this shit? Get a storage locker."

The sliver of his face hovers between the doorframe and the ajar door. The sharp point of his 'nose' –– the bridge of a bird's nasal structure, or whatever part of bird anatomy that may be — nearly brushes the door itself, he stands so close. She feels acutely aware that there isn't a window in her bathroom.

"My parents wouldn't want their nice things sitting in a storage locker," she says, finally.

"I hate to break this to you," he says, "but your parents are dead."

She smiles at him, but the barb stings, no matter how small it is. Smiling is still the quickest way to buffer him, and she sees it in the way he stands a little straighter, apparently disappointed that she hasn't been crushed by this _stunning_ revelation. Her parents are dead. Her parents have been dead for a long time. She couldn't save them any more than they could save themselves. 

Angela moves to the bathroom door and opens it the rest of way. Reaper looms in the doorway, blocking her path.

"Pathetic," he says, but it's lower. Morose.

"If you say so," she says. She can't disagree, but it is who she is and that causes her to square her jaw. "Move, please."

She reaches for him and he moves out of her reach immediately, so she breezes right by. His hulking black form shrinks from her like shadows from light; he's in her territory. There's a shift, there.

"Enough of this," she says. "What did you come here for, Reaper?"

Reaper is silent, the great line of his shoulders tense, his head tilted low –– not for shame, she's sure, but just to watch her closely. 

"Jack said you couldn't shadow-step," she says. She sits down on the bed.

" _Jack_ doesn't know _shit_ ," Reaper says.

"Why don't you let me do an assessment, then?"

He's silent again.

"Reaper," she says. "You're the one who said you needed to be fixed."

"I just need you to put the nanocontroller back online," he says. "Nothing more, nothing less."

Not _his_ nanocontroller, it's _the_ nanocontroller. A foreign entity, a hostile invading body in his flesh, depriving him of his individuality. Isn't that how he sees it? He certainly did when his life was saved by it. He shouldn't now that he's realized he can't live without it.

Angela stares him down for a moment, wondering if she could ever truly win such an argument. Not today, but maybe someday.

"You have to let me assess you," she says. "I can't help you unless I know what the problem is."

His fingers flex. He takes two slow, furious steps towards her, boots dirty on her nice carpets. He looms over her, standing so close his knees nearly brush hers, and she leans back on her hands to wait him out. He curses suddenly, frustrated.

"Fine," he says, finally. "But you stop when I say so."

"And nothing that will make you uncomfortable," she agrees.

He undoes his gauntlets, releasing the magnet closures with one hand. He sets them aside and then pulls off his gloves, one finger at a time; his fingers are grey, his nailbeds almost bluish from discoloration, and his nails weak and brittle at a glance alone. Cyanosis. Angela sits up straight and reaches to help him with his coat buckles. He turns his head to her.

"We'll be here all night if I just watch you," she says.

Behind his mask, he's scowling. She's sure of it. He drops his gloves entirely. "I could get up and dance while I take it off," he says, deadpan, but it pries a short chuckle out of her anyway.

"Don't be silly," she says, helping him out of the shoulders of his coat. He shucks it off the rest of the way. She reaches to run a hand over the back of his head; his compression suit is fitted tight to his skull, the mask strapped on overtop. He lets her. "Has anyone ever told you that mask looks ridiculous without a hood on?"

"Every damn day," Reaper says. 

"Ahh," Angela says. "You know, Sombra seems like the exact kind you would have taken under your wing fifteen years ago, too. Who is she?"

Reaper sighs, almost exasperated.

"She's a thirty year old from Mexico that likes computers," he says. "That's about all I know."

"That's all?" Angela says. "You used to prattle with Jesse for hours. You knew his whole life story in a week, you two talked so much." She thoughtlessly reaches to touch his 'face', fingers coasting over the enamel of his mask. He used to be very handsome. "I don't believe you just sit there in silence all the time while she makes fun of you."

"I don't," he says.

She helps him with his body armor. The carbon fiber panels snap off to reveal a chunky zipper, and she drags the tag down until he stops her hand, somewhere around his navel. 

"I can undress myself," he says, pointedly. "I'm not a goddamn invalid. Go get your things set up."

Angela sighs and relents. She moves across her apartment to the kitchen, where she starts pulling things out of the cabinets. In all, her kitchen has maybe a day or two's worth of non-perishable food, two and a half place settings, a couple cooking dishes, and a sorry-looking knife block. The rest is all medical supplies; everything from stacks of packaged sterile drape sheets, scapels and micro instruments to handheld consoles and metering systems and all their associated accessories. She doesn't have a proper lab to store them in anymore, but she has been known to spend a Saturday night at the kitchen table, testing something out, even if only on herself. So why not make use of her kitchen?

The last thing she needs to get is in her med kit, though. It's sitting on the kitchen table, a sleek black bag she takes with her everywhere. With a furative look towards the bedroom, her line of sight completely blocked by stacks of boxes, she opens the bag and pulls out the small sealed bag with the tiny little kill switch chip in it. It's smaller than a pinhead. She's had it as long as she could remember, as a last resort for Genji, or even herself, and she's redeveloped it a number of times over the years.

She's had it prepared for Reaper for a long time now, and the sad thing is all his fears are justified.

She holds it up to the light for a second.

She can do this.

When she gets back to the bedroom, arms laden with supplies and the switch bag in her waistband, Reaper is sitting on her bed, stripped to the waist. It feels strange to look at this man who is obviously Gabriel Reyes between navel and neck and still call him Reaper, but the mask stays affixed to his face, even though the hood is gone. He looks in her direction as she walks back in, and she deposits the supplies next to him on the bed.

"So what happened, exactly?" she asks, standing over him.

"I got hit with an EMP," he replies.

"It must have been a considerable EMP," she says. She can put together where and when.

He shrugs, noncommitally. She watches the little twitch of his musculature as he does, the way his abs ripple a little as he slouches. His colouring is poorer than usual, but that could be seeing it all at once, instead of just the narrow strip of his forearm.

She pulls on a pair of latex gloves, snapping them tight to her wrists, and she holds up her hand to show him.

"Ready?"

"Let's get this over with," he replies.

He's still tense when she first touches him, her fingertips meeting his shoulder. She presses gently, feeling around the firmness of his skin; he feels a little warm to the touch, but it's nothing that concerns her, and he grows more patient as she goes. (He's always that way, worked up and testy until the first hurdle is over with.) She works her way along his arm, a little firmer. He turns his head sharply to her when she presses a full palm to him.

"Are you still nervous?" she asks, running her fingers around the nape of his neck. He'd chastised her for doing that, just once, something about protocol, but he'd never complained about it. "Would it comfort you to hold onto something? A stuffed animal? Maybe one of your shotguns?" 

He scoffs, but as she had hoped, he relaxes a little bit.

"I hate your bedside manner."

"That's fine. Lean forward a little for me," she says. He does so, elbows on his knees. Her smile fades a bit when she sees the patch between his shoulders; it's never looked all that nice, given the amount of procedures centered there and his refusal to let her do much in the way of cosmetic work, but now it looks like it is losing enough blood flow to start atrophying. 

She frowns.

"Does this hurt?" she says. She pokes a finger at it.

"When you poke it, yes," he grouses.

She picks up a control meter off the bed and powers it on, and after a moment of tinkering she scans his system. Sure enough, there's a dead spot, right between his shoulder blades, where the main hub is. Barbaric old thing; if he'd let her, she'd replace it with one more like hers, but she knows he isn't ready for that. Baby steps.

"Would you tolerate me opening you up just a little?" she asks.

"No," he says.

"If you want me to get you back in working order, you'll have to," she says.

"Then make it quick," he says. 

"On your belly, then," she says.

There's a bit of a tango between them as she unfolds a surgical drape for him and Reaper shifts to sprawl out on it. The surgical sheet crackles as it creases under his weight. It's not the first time they've done this, even if it has been a long while. Before now, however, it was always in random hotels at best, or less-ideal meeting spots at worst. (That time she had to fix a broken nanite cluster in his hip, crouched in the Paris Catacombs, that had been the absolute worst.) Widowmaker would always be there, too, holding an eerie silent vigil.  With that in mind, Angela feels a touch of surprise that he'd finally allow her to do this alone, too, but it's overwhelmed by a sense of victory. After all this time, maybe they're getting somewhere. Maybe with a bit more time, he'll be ready for more.

She has to remind herself that there won't be a future time, if Reaper will be dead soon.

"What are you waiting for?" he growls.

"I was thinking about how you're being very brave for me," she teases. 

"Just get started," he growls.

"Yes, yes."

A long time ago, Angela had spent months convincing both Gabriel and Jack to let her poke around at them –– to see what a SEP soldier looked like under the hood, so to speak. For a time, they'd each indulged her in their own ways, even through the various promotions and developments within Overwatch that should have left those kinds of indiscretions off-limits. She'd learned a lot about SEP anatomy, and it was a good thing. It'd allowed her to save their lives on more than one occasion.

Now, though, his anatomy frustrates her. It's shoddy work. The discoloration and craters and Frankensteined flesh on the surface that could be fixed with ease with her more recent development is a particular worry, but he has a good foundation. The valley between his shoulder blades is pronounced, his scapulae broad and defined. He needs a lot of work but the potential is there.

She sterilizes him with a spray and then arranges the needles where he can see them.

"Just three," she says.

He flinches when she presses into his flesh. She only needs to make three tiny incisions for this, just enough to slip the pins under his skin and muscle to the nanocontroller. If she plugs into it manually she can restart it, and then hopefully she can get it working in tandem with his cells again.

Gabriel –– she might as well just call him Gabriel right now –– makes a noise when the second needle slides in. It's a thicker gague, on a tougher path. She hums a little as he does, as if it might comfort him, and she watches his flesh twitch under the stimulus. 

"One more," she says, softly. She slides it in before he can react, and she feels his entire back tense from where she's sitting with her hip against his, poring over his exposed spine. 

He mutters something she doesn't hear. He's muffled by the duvet. He turns his head to the side and she looks at him as if he could be looking back, but the black voids of his eyes just stare to the side. She finishes plugging in the probes and then sets on positioning them; he twitches a little with every moment, and when she gently jockeys a hard spot, he grabs her by the thigh hard enough to hurt.

"Ow," she says, pointedly, and he looses his grip, but he doesn't let go. 

He doesn't say anything. She keeps working. His grip persists, the thick pad of his thumb wound into her soft spot above her knee. She shifts a little, leaning over him more to rest her elbow on his back. The skin is cool there against her bare arm.

It's oddly intimate, to be doing minor surgery in her bedroom. She'd never done that before on anyone else. Her place had always been an oasis, far from the workings of Overwatch or its people, and now she has him here. He doesn't say anything for a bit, and it's almost nice until she gets little metal micro-tweezers on the edge of the device fused to his spine. When she resets it with a controller and he lets out a hiss of pain. His fingers wind into the bed, and her thigh, and then relax again.

His skin almost _steams_ black with smoke the moment it comes online again. The cells in the region start cycling immediately, pinking up.

"There it is," he says, suddenly. "Get out."

"One minute!" she says, alarmed. "I can't just yank them out, and I don't want you shifting with these _in_ you. You'll just heal around it if you cycle now!"

She still has to put the kill switch in.

He stops.

"Good," she says, petting his back once, and then twice, as if that might comfort him. "Just another minute, Gabriel."

"Shut up and do it, then," he says.

She pulls the switch out of her waistband and unpackages it. Every crackle of the plastic makes her heart stop, but he doesn't notice; she's been unwrapping all sorts of sterile tools. He waits, tense under her arm, and she manoevers it through the needle with the tips of her micro-tweezers. In it goes, and she activates it easily, one of the many small wonders of modern technology.

It's done.

She slides the probes out one by one. It takes a few minutes, but he waits. She's sure she'd have bruises from his grip on her, if her own nanites didn't repair damage like that after mere seconds.

"There," she says, as the last one comes out. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Don't get excited," he says.

"Hmm," she hums. She hopes he'll forgive her for all this, at the very least, but then she thinks of what Jack had said just this morning. Doesn't she need to let go of being forgiven by him and focus on what she has now? What she has _again?_ "May I give you a painkiller, at least?"

"No," he says. "I'll just wait."

"Very well."

She lays down next to him. He stays still on his stomach, though he turns his face to hers. She pretends for an instant that they are a decade or two younger again, arrogant and high on both the power and potential of Overwatch; this is a moment they'd had before. He stares at her blankly. Her wet hair slowly seeps into the coverlet of her bed.

"Do you ever feel lonely?" she asks.

"No."

"You can tell me, you know," she says. "I think we've all been lonely."

"It seems lonely being _you_ ," he says, and then it pours out of him, mean: "All you do is putter around your charity causes, occasionally go to meetings where they just talk over you, and you put up with it because it's all they'll _let_ you do. You don't go anywhere interesting. You don't _do_ anything interesting."

Angela smiles at him, though her heartstrings creak under the weight of his words. She reaches out again to touch him softly, gloved fingertips on his skin, and says: "It is lonely, Gabriel. But don't you feel that too, with Talon?"

He doesn't seem to know what to say to that. He rolls his face away from her a bit and sighs. She stays where she is. Gabriel sighs.

"When you joined Overwatch," he says, finally. "Would you have joined if it was just me to convince you?"

 _If Jack wasn't there?_ Angela stares up at the ceiling. She'd honestly never considered that part before, the what-ifs. She liked to think she was the sort of person who dwelled on the things that did happen, at least where the past is concerned.

"Maybe," she says. "Who can say?"

He lets out a noncommital hum.

"That was a nice night," she says, looking at him again. "You know, I was always happiest when you two were happy."

Gabriel snorts. "No kidding? You're an emotional _sponge_."

She laughs, under her breath. She wishes it could go back to being that way, but there are some things better left unsaid. Instead, she rolls onto her side, knees tucked up a little so they bump against his thigh. She likes him a little like this; he's almost the man he used to be, when his voice rumbles low enough to forget the electronic voice box, when he's even mildly relenting to her urge to be playful with him. He stares at her with black eyes.

"So you think about that night?" she asks.

He exhales, long and slow. 

"Mercy," he says.

He sounds tired, for once.

"Do you?"

He shifts closer to her now, more onto his side, to face her. For a moment she just watches him again, and she reaches to touch his cheek, his mask hard under her fingers. She thinks the answer is yes. She shifts closer to press her lips to his chin, to the edge of that hard 'V'  in the center of his mask. He has no mouth. He breathes out, slowly, utterly still. She creeps back a bare inch.

He reaches back to grip her wrist. For a moment she's frozen, incapable of moving away. His vacant mask bores back at her, perpetually unimpressed, but she imagines that behind it, he's softer. Gabriel. He'd always been far more sensitive than he'd liked to ever let on, not like Jack.

And then he reaches for her waistband, and with no preamble he slips his hand past the elastic to cup her roughly in his palm. Angela breathes in a little sharp, a little startled; he just clutches and squeezes her mound once, and then twice, and then pushes a finger past her folds. It drags against her roughly, but the pressure pushes an instant spike up her spine. She clutches his cheek and breathes in sharply.

"Gabe," she says, even as she presses back against him. "I don't advise—"

After an injury? After minor surgery? _In general?_  

"Shut up," he says.

She does. She shifts closer, into his touch, her forehead falling against his mask. He runs a firm circle around her clit, and then slides back. His finger comes back wet; she feels him slip easier, and then firmer. She closes her eyes, and oh–– her mouth drops open in a silent gasp, inhaling sharply. The hand on his cheek slips off so she can grip his bicep instead, and this is only encouragement to him; his fingers grow stronger on her, bumping her pulse up hard, fast.

Angela lets her face fall against the duvet, away from his. The heat creeps up her body, relentless, and she curves herself against him. He chuckles close to her ear; she can always count on him to find comfort in this kind of recklessness.

"Take your pants off," he says, voice low, and he yanks them halfway there himself.

She fumbles, getting the other hip out from under her, and she kicks them down past her knees; an oddly difficult task, when he hardly lets up on petting her. She moves right to his beltline next, but when she splits the zipper, his hand stills against her. There's a beat of silence between them where she runs her hand over his groin, palm curved against the shaft of his cock. She kisses his mask again.

"Well," she murmurs. "Let's get you hard for me."

"Go," he says, withdrawing entirely.

With a throbbing between her legs, she gets out of bed and crosses the apartment to her medkit. She tips it over on the counter and plucks out an injector and a vial, both of which she clutches in one hand as she walks back to the room. Gabriel has his trousers just off his hips when she rounds the door; his flaccid cock lays against his leg. Angela wastes no time assembling the syringe and loading it, but she hands it to him to inject himself. He does without hesitation, with only the slightest little grunt. She doesn't watch; she moves to the window and gives the apartment across the way a look, but she closes the curtains anyway.

"Pain in the ass," he grumbles.

"But you can't argue with the results," she says, amused. She sits down with him, close enough to almost be in his lap. She lays an arm around his neck, mindful of the surgery site, and she reaches down to his cock again to stroke him. The way he vents through his mask quickens.

"On your knees," he says.

She does him one better, shifting not only to her knees but to straddle him in the process. She imagines dull surprise behind his mask, but she only gets a chuckle instead. He spans his hands up her bare thighs, squeezing her flesh here and there with enough grip to bruise. She reaches down to align his cockhead with her slit; there is no preamble, no foreplay with a masked man. He's hard and she's wet and that's that.

She sinks down on him; he's a little strange, a little intense. He pushes her down at the hips, trapping her flush with him; her teeth graze her lower lip to stifle a groan, her eyes flutter closed. That first push in is almost too much. She flexes around him, and while she'd almost rather stay upright on her knees, he brings a hand to the back of her head, fists his fingers in her hair and bends her down to his face, forcing her down. She reaches to grab at his wrist but he doesn't let go. He's not too rough, exactly, but––

"Are you lonely?" he murmurs to her. He pulses; he's raw and tense and rough. "Is that why you'll let me fuck you?"

"Mm," is all she can hum in response. He withdraws just to thrust into her again, harder, a hand clenching on her ass. She grips him tightly with her thighs, eyes screwed shut.

"You're lonely," he says. "Real lonely. Pathetic."

He pushes her over, but he doesn't move atop her. She ends up on her side, and she wraps her free leg tighter around his hips, just as he hitches her up a little higher. His fingers dig into her flesh. Angela leans her forehead against his; his breath is warm on her mouth, vented through the mask. He thrusts again and she is pushed up the bed a few inches.

"So," she murmurs to him; she would say more but he pushes the breath right out of her.

"So what?" he hisses.

"So are–– _aah_ ––you."

He gets a palm over her mouth and holds it there. Angela whines behind it; there's a loss of sensation in her legs, a building pressure as he bears down on her again and again. She keeps that leg wrapped around his hip, tight, her heel digging into the back of his thigh, her bare skin dragging against the leather of his pants. He doesn't seem to notice, preoccupied as he is.

And then he gasps and stills, spent. 

He's heaving. Fair, she figures; he's been through enough these past few days. For a moment she lets him rest inside her, feeling exhausted but fine as long as he is. His hand lingers on her mouth a moment longer and then drops off, down her chest. They're snuggled so close that his mask is against her shoulder, and she can feel his breath on her skin. Every time he heaves a breath, his chest expands against hers and then contracts again. His skin is warmer. Pinker, maybe just from exertion. His heart working harder.

Angela gets an arm around him. Her latexed fingers work up the notches of his spine, as far as she can reach, anyway. He seems alright.

"Shh," she hushes him, though it feels strange to. "Don't cycle your cells just yet. Rest a little. Hmm?"

He's trembling, but she's sure he's just tired.

 

* * *

 

Quiet.

Night is falling beyond her closed drapes, and though it feels like it might be nearing midnight, when Angela consults her inner clock, it's barely eight. She could sleep, though, and sleep contentedly; she could always sleep contentedly with company, and Gabriel is still warm under her. He doesn't say anything. He just stays where he is, stretched out on his back. His only motion is to idly drag a finger through her hair, pushing locks of blonde hair in the wrong direction, catching strands and rubbing them between his fingertips. 

"Maybe sleep a little if you're so tired," she tells him, when neither has spoken for a while and it starts to rub.

"No," he says.

He doesn't lend anything else to conversation than that. He just idly runs a finger down the back of her neck and then back up again. That's just fine; he's lying anyway. She can feel how tired he is by the pace of his breaths, the tick of his heart. 

She thinks back to _that_ night, after the bar, how at one point she'd laid on Gabriel's chest like this, rising with his broad chest, forehead falling against his collarbone. Jack had been insistent and breathy at her back, talking incessantly. It had been a very nice night.

She sighs and presses a kiss to the arc of his cheekbone, the enamel cold against her lips. He doesn't move, frozen in place as only a mask could be. She kisses him a second time, gentler, and his time he puts a hand to the small of her back and pulls her ever so slightly closer against him. She _feels_ him sigh in return, even if he makes an annoyed sound.

"Gabriel?" she asks, nose against his mask.

"What?" he rumbles.

"May I look?"

There's a long pause, and he looks at her with those big empty eyes. She lets the hand on his cheek slide to his chin. He breathes in and she rises with his chest again; he nods, almost imperceptibly. Laid in his arm, she lifts the mask up and away and holds it aside.

She doesn't feel sad, looking at the ruined landscape of his face, the crags and craters where he'd once been full and handsome, the empty sockets where his eyes should be. It doesn't look much different from how it had all those years ago, when he'd decided enough was enough, but perhaps that's the part that makes her sad. Nothing has healed. It's likely nothing ever will.

"Not what you expected?" Gabriel asks, and his mouth doesn't move when he talks; his voice box doesn't rely on petty things like lips or a tongue anymore.

"Shh," she says, gently. "I just wanted to see."

She runs a finger along the edge of his ruined jaw and up to his cheekbones, and he grows very still, even underneath her; he's blind without the mask. Angela still recalls his strong cheekbones now, even when the bone protrudes meatlessly, even when they are rough with a spider web of torn and mangled sinew just under the skin. He'd had big, brown eyes. And his nose –– oh, Jack had teased him endlessly about his big nose, which is now two misshapen craters dipping in the center of his face.

Sad, how things change. She can think of a few things she would do to put him back to his old self again.

"Happy now?" he says.

"No," she says. She runs a finger tentatively around the countour of his face, feeling every crag and bump. She hesitates, and then says, carefully: "I just wish you'd let me help you."

"Get off of me," he says, immediately.

He pushes himself to sit, pushing her off him in the process. She sits up on one hand and attempts to put his mask back, but he gropes at her until he can take it from her to do it himself. The moment the magnets click together and seal, he turns his head to look at her, menacing and emotionless once more.

"We're done here," he says.

"Gabriel."

" _Fuck off_."

He sets about dressing immediately, the crags and craters of scar tissue disappearing under his shirt and all sorts of gear. For a moment Angela just leaves him in silence, still warm and wet, and then she says:

"Someday, you'll be ready to let me fix you. Someday you'll let me try again."

He fumbles a belt and has to stoop to pick it up again. He lashes it around his hips with a quake in his fingers. He's exhausted.

"Because you ruined my life the first time!" he spits. "Admit that, and then we can talk."

" _I_ didn't ruin your life," she says. "I have never had a single patient of mine react this way. Genji––"

" _Fuck_ Genji! It's always excuses with you. Not even one apology, just this sniveling, mournful _bullshit_ –– it's never _your_ fault, _is it?_ "

"Sit down, Gabriel," she says. She corrects herself: " _Reaper._ You're shaking."

"We're done," he repeats. 

"Come, now. You're upset."

She shifts to stand up, but he moves right into her space, blocking the side of the bed.

He picks up a shotgun out of its holster and levels it in her face. Angela looks up its long, thick barrel, along the girth of his arm and to his face. He just bores down on her, shoulders squared. 

She doesn't even feel a lick of fear. Does he think that will do something?

"If you want to go, that's fine," she says. "But you've been under considerable duress these past few days. You should relax before you overdo it."

He butts the shotgun right under her chin, and then, thinking differently, he removes it entirely. He holsters it again and puts on his coat, yanking on the sleeves one by one.

" _Duress,_ " he scoffs.

"I'm trying to help you," she says. 

"Keep your fucking pity. Sombra, we're done here."

Angela freezes.

"Sombra?" she repeats.

" _Hola_ ," Sombra replies. 

Sombra bleeds into view in the doorway, pink light becoming tangible flesh again, rolling her fingers in a little wave, but it's not all that cheeky anymore. Her mouth is set into a hard line, and her eyes are steeled; funny, from a young woman who had smirked through a blaster wound to the leg. 

"You were here this whole time?" Angela says. It slips out wary, which makes her feel even _more_ unnerved. 

Sombra watches her, unblinking, the pert little bow of her mouth frozen. She doesn't really look amused.

"For a while," she says, finally. She wiggles her fingers in gesture. "You were… _distracted_. You're just as miserable as he is, though, I'll give you that."

There isn't anything to reply with. Angela just reaches for her pants to dress. Reaper chuckles a little, but it doesn't sound all there, suddenly. Sombra lingers in the doorway, a little curl to the corner of her mouth that doesn't go much further. Neither of them seem to be at their best tonight, but it matters little right now. 

Reaper closes his last buckle.

"See?" Reaper says to Sombra. That arrogance is slipping back into his voice, cocksure. "I told you she was desperate."

Her face burns. She feels sick to her gut. And if she's being honest with herself, Sombra looks as upset as she feels inside, though, Angela is sure, in an entirely different way. She's not sure why, but she's had enough of it already.

And then, she realized, Sombra may have been watching the entire time. It would make sense, wouldn't it? A fear pours through her almost immediately; Sombra would have seen the kill switch.

Angela rises to her feet.

"I think it'd be best if both of you leave right now," Angela says. 

Both look at her, and for a moment she thinks her resolve might waiver, even in face of the indignity, but it doesn't. Outgunned, armorless, uncomfortable in her own home, Angela squares her shoulders and lifts her chin.

"Get out," she repeats.

"Touchy," Reaper replies. Sombra doesn't say anything, but Reaper doesn't miss an opportunity. He looms into her space and he says, inches from her face: "What are you going to do if I don't? Call the police? Call _Overwatch_? Run crying to _Jack_?"

"Of course not," she replies, sharper. It takes resolve to pluck herself up, to lean so close he'll lean back out of want for his personal space, but he doesn't move an inch. He's twice her weight and a fair bit taller, which is particularly noticable when her best defense is a flimsy tanktop. "What are _you_ going to do, Reaper? Come crawling to me for help, sleep with me and then _kill_ me? I don't think so."

"So you're calling my bluff?"

"You never even bluffed, because you're a _coward_ ," she says. "You said you're done here, so go."

He moves to grab her by the upper arm, but she slaps him away. He steps back but swerves on his feet a little in the process. Angela lets her eyes dart to Sombra –– she's apprehensive –– before she grabs Reaper by his forearms to steady him. He throws her off in turn.

"Get off!"

"If you don't want my help, that's fine," she snaps, putting some distance between them. It's _not_ fine. It's _never_ been fine. It pours out of her like water, like blood: "But at least I can say I tried, Gabriel Reyes. Even if you refuse me, the one who made you a man again, I _tried_. For _years_ I tried."

Reaper stares back at her, blank and empty, though the line of his shoulders tells her she is crossing lines with abandon. She swallows, hard, but she leans into his space one more time to snap:

"God forbid I ask for something from you now and again."

Reaper lunges but Sombra surges forward suddenly, quick and bright. She seizes Reaper by the arm and holds him back, and he lets her –– he _must_ let her, given the size of him. Angela watches the anger flash across Sombra's face, her dark brows plunging at the center and her lip curled. She speaks to Reaper in rapid, angry Spanish; Angela doesn't know what it means, so she just walks, listening to them argue behind her. (Funny. It's been a long, long time since she heard him speak Spanish. She'd almost forgotten he could.)

"I'll get the door for you," Angela says, and she moves past them, right to the front door.

Sombra and Reaper move down the narrow passageway after her, still talking. They get to the door and Angela opens it for them unceremoniously, her lips pursed and her chin high. Reaper will want the last word –– he always wants the last word –– and as he passes through the doorframe, he turns his mask to her and he utters:

"You should have just let me die."

For a moment she stands there, frozen, and then it slips out to their turned backs:

"We'll see about that, Gabriel. We'll see."

She slams the door after them, and she locks it.

They're instantly snapping at each other down the hall, voices low. Angela lingers by the door, clutching the lock. Reaper is hissing. She hears the dull thud of someone hitting the wall, Sombra's snarl in return, but she doesn't open the door to look. They're down the stairs a moment later anyway.

She moves to the kitchen window and peers through an inch of curtain. The sleek black car in the street powers on, lifting off its struts. She watches Sombra walk to it and yank open a door, and Reaper shuffles behind her, his great shoulders sagging into a curve, his gait off. Angela watches with her teeth grit. They climb in and close the door. Angela waits until she sees the car start to move, and then she moves back to her bed. 

Her heart is pounding. Absolutely pounding. She clutches her chest for a moment, as if she could calm herself with a hug.

Why didn't Sombra intervene? That'd be why Reaper would have her supervise, wouldn't it? Did she not know what to look for?

Angela doesn't know.

Angela moves to her bedroom window, rules herself calm and touches her communicator.

"Hello," she says, clipped, tense. "It's me."

She should have used a proper callsign, but it's too late for that. She opens the curtain. Across the street, Jack and Ana sit in the window of the empty apartment. Even across the width of the street, her eyes meet Jack's.

"It's done."


	9. Damage

 

.

 

 

"What the fuck is going on?" Sombra demands.

"What is what?" he asks, exhausted, but her tone is different this time. Not indignant, not just angry. She sounds shaken. Reaper isn't sure what to do about it; his vision is fogged out, like black mist. He can feel it coming off him in ribbons, and leaving the apartment Sombra's hands had kept slipping through him while trying to keep him upright.

"What the hell just happened?!"

Reaper feels the strength drained completely from his body. He sags in the back seat, pain thrumming through him. His cock is still hard. With fumbling, trembling fingers he adjusts his pants. Sombra heaves an incredulous, disgusted little noise. He barely registers Widowmaker turning in her seat, and he mostly just _feels_ Sombra crawling across the bench seat from the other door. She seizes the bandolier across his chest and jerks it vigorously to shake _him_ , and when he makes no effort to push her off, she grabs him by the hood.

"What the fuck is your damage?" she demands. "What the fuck— you _fuck_ her after _what she did to you?_ "

"It's complicated," he says.

"It must be if you just let her keep playing you like that! I can't believe you. Are you spineless or something?"

"What happened?" Widowmaker asks.

"He's her fucking science project! I started going through––"

"Shut up," Reaper interjects. It comes out slurred, or as close to slurred as his voice box can manage –– it cuts in and out. The sound is so unexpected it startles both Sombra and Widowmaker, neither of whom seem to know how to respond _._

Reaper feels the car lurch. Widowmaker is driving now; the streetlights run over his head like alien spaceships, and Sombra tilts next to him, trying to stay upright on her knees in a suddenly-moving car. 

"What'd she do to you, Gabe?" Sombra demands, finally.

He doesn't respond so she shakes him again. Something hurts. Maybe his face, he's not sure. He tries to lift his arms to reach for his mask, but Sombra's got one arm trapped by–– something? He feels numbness. His hands are floating away from his body, maybe. His face feels exposed. She –– _Mercy,_ not Sombra –– had dragged her fingers across his cheek, over the hard bone and the surgical screws — but it wasn't dragging, not _really_. Her touch was gentle, _caressing_. It'd been a long time since someone other than her touched him gently. He could have trembled. She had pet him, fearless. _Fearless,_ as if he wasn't a wreck.

That's the only reason, he thinks. The only reason in a sea of bad thoughts and feelings. The only reason at all to feel sad for ending her life. He supposes that, more than the grudging mandatory maintenance of his own body, is reason enough to have saved her for last. Once she's gone, nobody will hold him. 

But he isn't supposed to care about things like that anymore.

Maybe he blacks out for a bit. He's not sure if it's that or if he just got stuck in his own head. He doesn't dream of anything either, though, and he can't tell the passage of time, and the streetlights keep running over him. Sombra and Widowmaker are talking but he doesn't quite register what.

He finally slurs again: "You were supposed to be watching."

"Unfortunately, I _was_ ," Sombra says. She heaves a sigh. "You're so fucked up."

"Don't worry about him," Widowmaker supplies, deadpan. "He's always like this after he visits her. He reacts poorly to the drug she gives him."

_Thanks, bitch._ As if Sombra needed another reason to justify thinking little of him, after everything she just _supervised_. God, he should have–– should have just asked Widowmaker again. She knows. Maybe she even gets it, somewhere under all the work Talon's done on her.

"Go and laugh," Reaper says. There's another word, right? "Go on. Laugh it up."

Sombra doesn't laugh. Reaper lets his head hangs forward only for Sombra to clutch the sides of his mask to hold his head up again; this close, he can only see the pink glow of the transdermal implants wrapped around her skull. It hurts to look at but he can't pull away.

"Are you _sure_ it's not something more than _dick medicine_?" she demands. To Widowmaker, maybe.

"It's always been this way," Widowmaker says. She sounds exasperated. 

Reaper fumbles against Sombra's hands, as if he could shove her off, get her and her fucking glow away from him. Out of his face. He doesn't. She hovers over him still, oppressive light.

"You're pretty fucking relaxed about this," Sombra snaps. It sounds like an accusation. She's looking him over again; he realizes belatedly that she is reading him, his… code? Fuck. "I can't believe the shit I have to put up with you two!"

Widowmaker stops the car, so abruptly that Sombra has to slam a hand down on the back of the front seat to keep from tumbling into the front seat. Reaper lurches, too, but he's sitting heavily enough that he just doubles at the waist. Sitting up again is a struggle.

"What are you doing?" Sombra demands.

Reaper hears the front door open, and the click of Widowmaker's heels on pavement as she gets out of the car. She comes round to his door and opens it; the cool summer night breeze spills over him, and he blearily looks up at her to see the dull red lights of her rifle pointed in his face.

"Widow," he manages.

"On your feet," she orders.

Reaper starts stumbling but he can't get his feet out of the footwell.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Sombra demands.

"On your feet, Reaper," Widowmaker repeats.

"Hey!" Sombra snaps; she lunges forward, almost across Reaper's lap, and he grunts when she puts her weight on his thighs. "He's fucked up enough. Get the gun out of his face."

But Widowmaker doesn't really care who she's pointing a gun at. Reaper knows that. 

"Listen. You have ten seconds to pull both yourself and him together," Widowmaker says. "If you cannot do that, then you've both been compromised."

Reaper knows how this works. He knows how it goes. He stops trying to move, though, too tired to be get out. Sombra heaves a disgusted noise, still knelt over him.

"You really want to pick a fight, Widow?" Sombra demands. It's a threat, but an empty one. She can't reach her gun from where she is, at least not without getting shot at close range first. Reaper knows that even while screwed up. It'd be impossible not to, with his training. It's an instinct. "You really gonna go at this mission without us?"

"I would have a better go of it alone instead of carrying your dead weight," Widowmaker replies. "Compose yourselves now."

Widowmaker rests of the muzzle of her rifle against his temple again. In a way, it'd almost be better if Widowmaker just put a bullet through his head, let it bounce around in his skull until he went braindead. He thinks it would be a relief _,_ but anger simmers low in his belly, too, at the indignity of all of this.

He was once one of the most decorated soldiers on the planet. He has had a hand in shaping the world, making what it is. He was a worldbeater. He was everything, eternal, a _legend_. Now he is a monster, an abberation of nature, slumped in a stolen car in a Swiss neighbourhood, a gun to his head. His pants are sticky. He fucks with the woman who spent years fucking him –– who _still_ fucks him. 

How did he get here? He should be better than this.

Reaper forces himself to sit back again, the back of his head bumping the headrest. He exhales. His body sings out in pain and his cells tremble as he urges them to cycle, purge. It's slow going.

"Pull yourself together, Sombra," he says. 

Sombra's quiet at first, and she sits back on the seat. Reaper can hear her breathing, hear her teeth gnashing, she's so mad. He looks to her and she comes back into focus, and Widowmaker holds careful vigil over them while Sombra steels herself.

"Good," Widowmaker says, finally. "If you've finished with your hysterics, get him straightened out and get back in your seat. We're an hour and a half from Zurich, and then we have ten hours until the Museum opens. He needs to be ready to work by then."

"I will be," Reaper says.  

"You're both slaves," Sombra announces, but her voice is ruled more level. Calm. She sits there and fixes one of his buckles, straightens his hood. "Both of you. You're slaves to these sick bastards. And you don't even care."

She grabs a tissue box out of the door pocket and unceremoniously hands him a wad, shoving it between his fingers when he doesn't grip it. He sits there with tissue in his hand, unmoving, but at least his breathing is level. Reaper just watches Widowmaker close his door, move back to the front seat, slide in and turn the car back on again. The hovers thrum to life and boost them up, and they start gliding forward. When Widowmaker looks back in the rearview mirror, her eyes are passive, dead. Had she even heard? Would she even care, if she had?

For a minute, Sombra is quiet again. He keeps cycling, cycling until his vision starts clearing up more. When he finally gets a good look at her, Sombra is sitting on her end of the back seat, knees tucked up and a look of hideous fury on her face. _You're thirty,_ he wants to say to her. _Stop acting like a kid first discovering how messed up the world is._ He can't, though –– Widowmaker will still kill them. Worse, she'd probably relish doing it.

He puts a hand on the narrow seat between them, dropping the tissues. Sombra looks at his hand suspiciously.

"I care," he says.

He wishes that didn't sound so sarcastic.

"So why do you let them get away with it?" Sombra asks.

"I've killed thirty-six former Overwatch agents in the past year alone," Reaper says. "And eventually I'm going to kill them all. Jack and Angela and Ana, and the Monkey, they're at the top of my list."

"You keep fucking saying that," Sombra says. "You keep saying you have this plan, you're going to kill them, you're going to get back at them, but you never do. You get wrecked here, and in Volskaya, and in Cairo –– you just get kicked down everywhere you go."

Reaper looks to Widowmaker in the rearview mirror. She's looking straight ahead.

"When are you _actually_ going to kill her?"

Reaper thinks he's had enough of this.

"She's supposed to be last, in case I need her before then," he says, "but if this is how she's going to act, then next time I see her, she's dead."

The three of them lapse into silence. Reaper watches the lights continue overhead, faster now when Widowmaker pulls onto the highway. In the darkness of the car, away from the lights of the townhouses, the only other light is the low blue glow of the dashboard and the pink of Sombra's accessories.

"Gabriel," Widowmaker says.

He looks to the rearview mirror. He hates her for using his name, but she's watching him quietly, her hooded eyes dark. 

"You wanted to know how I felt," Widowmaker says. "When we were watching the Sleeping Beauty."

It takes him a moment to realize what she's talking about. Reaper contemplates the ballet dully, but comes up with nothing. He watches her. Her small mouth is pursed, but her eyes are still passive. He's looking for something that doesn't exist, and that annoys him. _She_ annoys him, and not just because she just threatened to kill him.

"And?" he prompts.

"I've been thinking about one of the girls in the _corps_. She has poor feet, but has trained all her life to compensate. But it wasn't enough," Widowmaker says. "I still saw it."

Reaper looks away; not that it matters, in a mask, but he hates her for making him feel _uncomfortable_. He doesn't want to know her anymore; why would he want to see her as _people_ with thoughts and opinions and feelings? He only has enough rage for _himself_.

"Her instructors probably didn't watch her through a scope, or with superhuman effort," Reaper replies, clipped. God, he just wants to rest.

"No," Widowmaker agrees. "But I saw a sluggishness, a breaking point to her flexibility — she'll never survive in the company. It's a miracle she was allowed in at all. Her career will be over before long."

"That's a lot of commentary for someone who doesn't care," Reaper remarks. He feels Sombra's eyes on him, too.

"It's not that I don't care. It's that I should feel sad," she says. "But I feel nothing."

Reaper pauses.

"You are lucky," Widowmaker continues. "You have your conviction. You should have been employing it for your own self-preservation all along, instead of letting it destroy you."

Some good that has done him.

She turns her eyes back to the road. There's silence between them and Reaper feels a modicum of fear, but there's nothing he can do about it.

 

* * *

 

Reaper sleeps most of the drive. It's rare that he sleeps, usually because he can just cycle his cells a few times and come through feeling fresh. Maybe he should more often –– it would feel very human to sleep, very ritualistic to go to bed with the rest of the world –– but he just doesn't. He can't bring himself to lay down and do something so normal. Maybe it's the dreams. Maybe it's the fact that it feels like a sham. 

Pretending just feels wrong.

"Everything we know about the function of sleep is a theory," Mercy had said, once, stretched out on her back on the couch. She'd been topless, her modest breasts flattened out against the wall of her chest. She hadn't been Mercy then, actually. She'd been Angela, and he hadn't hated her then. Her words float back anyway: "I have a colleague in Zurich who is working on figuring out how the human body can subsist without sleep. They invited me to help them out –– just think of how useful it would be to have another eight hours in the day."

"Easily. But would you give up sleep?" he'd asked. He'd probably stretched out beside her, forced her to turn on her side just so his broad frame would fit. Hadn't he? She'd been so warm, tucked in his arm.

"I wouldn't," she'd said. "There's something sacred about it. It's like a little rebirth every time. No matter how stubborn a problem is, it's clear after a night's rest. A tiny resurrection."

"Deep," he'd laughed.

She'd laughed, too.

He should stop thinking about her like that, but it pushes him beyond sleep and into the realm of the waking, claws him from the ambivalence of rest and back into the world where he is angry and intending to kill her.

He realizes Sombra's thigh is under his head.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," she says, sarcastically. It must actually be after midnight. They're still in the car. Widowmaker has left, gone somewhere.

"Where are we?" he asks, sitting up on a forearm. His body feels close to the usual status quo. 

"A parking lot in Zurich," Sombra says. "Want to know something funny?"

_Not really._

"We took a fucking car to what is essentially a _heist_ on a _museum_. We have all this technology at our disposal and we played it out like some shitty Los Muertos action after the Omnic War."

"Hilarious," Reaper says.

"Whatever, Talon's sending a jet for the extraction after," Sombra says. She's putting on make-up, meticulously tracing out the line of her lips with a pencil. "Want to know something even funnier?"

"What?"

"Gibraltar's emptied out. Talon intel says they're headed to try to intercept us."

_Good_ , Reaper thinks. 

His knees hurt; they've been jammed up against the back of Widowmaker's seat, as her legs are long enough that she has to put the seat almost all the way back. He looks at Sombra and her ample space and wonders if he could ask her to switch, but he could just bully her into it. He could move to the front seat, but he's not sure which is worse, Sombra yapping at him from his side or Sombra yapping at him from behind and also putting her feet against his seat.

Why the fuck are they parked here anyway? Where the fuck is Widowmaker? He doesn't know but he doesn't care enough to ask.

He looks at Sombra again. She's doing her eyebrows now, cleaning up little stray hairs with a pair of tweezers to preserve that silly little gap she manicures into them. She looks like a clown. How did he ever end up spending so much time with women who put in so much effort to look as plastic as possible?

"How are you feeling?" Sombra asks. She glances at him sidelong and then goes back to her reflection in the compact.

He's not sure how to respond at first. She's never asked before. He wants to brush her off but he's internally a little digusted with himself for being intrigued by the question.

"Ready to go," he says, finally. 

She rolls her eyes.

"It's always _work_ with you," she says.

"We're not agents of Talon just to fool around."

"That wasn't work _earlier_ ," she says, in Spanish. She gestures at him with her tweezers. "I don't give those out personal favours lightly. If we're buddies enough for you to invite me along to that shitshow, I think I can ask how you're feeling."

"It doesn't matter, Sombra," he says. "If you're looking for gossip as repayment, then you're out of luck. The only repayment you get is me not throttling you dead for being obnoxious about it."

She rolls her eyes again. It bothers him. He even has half a mind to choke her a bit just to prove that he's serious, but what would the point be? Widowmaker would probably come back just in time to see them and turn the car into a gas chamber. 

"Listen," Sombra says. "When you were busy putting it to Doctor Frankenstein, I didn't feel like losing my appetite for the rest of my life, so I took a good look at her place." She makes a little typing gesture. "You know what I found in all those boxes?"

"Her dead mother's nice linens? Her dead father's slippers?" Reaper suggests, sarcastic. The alternative is ugly and he wants to sweep it away, distract her. "Her brother used to figure skate. She used to brag about all the trophies he had."

"You don't want me to say it, do you?" she says, semi-sweet.

"I don't."

She's going to anyway. He grits his teeth.

"I found your files."

"You found my files?" he repeats.

For a moment they look at each other. He wants her to be smug about it, at least, but she isn't. She looks at him like he's a fucking maniac, _nothing_ like her. God, he _hates_ her, he just––

He surges across the bench seat to slam her against the door. Sombra's lithe little body crunches, and her forearms threaten to break under his hands. She yowls, head jerking as it bangs off the tinted window, and he pulls her towards him rapidly just to slam her back there again.

"I'll take that as–" she starts, and she continues with grit teeth: "––you're feeling like your usual self!"

"You _looked at_ my files?" he snarls.

Sombra chuckles, but lip is curled and her eyes screw shut for a moment. A look of pain passes over her face when he grips her tighter; her skinny little computer-nerd arms are barely as thick as his wrists, and he could snap them if he wanted, break them clean in two. Make sure she never uses her hands again.

" _Sombra_ ," he hisses.

She opens her eyes again and looks at him, really looks at him. He feels her gaze penetrate his mask and bore right into his skull, and he feels his power shrink as he realizes she knows just how mangled he is. How thoroughly he got _screwed_. Some _pitiable_ , detestable cluster of nanomachines and animal cells scraped off the concrete and forced into a sub-human form––

He lets her go with a snarl of frustration, sitting back on his side of the back seat with clenched fists and a searing pain in his jaw as he grits his teeth. For a moment she just watches him, some involuntary glassiness to her eyes that doesn't match the lift of her chin. She's not smiling. It cuts more than if she did.

"No wonder you're saving her for last," she says.

_No wonder._

Reaper slouches into the seat, one clawed hand clutching his own head.

If she's there today, he's not going to save her anymore.

 

* * *

 

Combat is the biggest thrill Reaper has now, in life, or in death –– whatever state it is he currently occupies. 

He couldn't care less about the gauntlet. Right now, getting to screw with the monkey feels more satisfying. It feels like leveling the playing field after a few shitty rounds, a few foiled attempts. He'll pay for it with some cracked ribs and gnarly bruises that will take a few good cycles to heal, but oh _fuck_ does he ever relish the look on Winston's face when his heavy boot comes down on those stupid glasses. If he could bottle that hurt, he'd cherish it forever. 

Trashing that stupid fucking museum in the process isn't so bad, either. If he could strip these lingering traces of Overwatch from the face of the earth, maybe he could finally rest.

Sometimes it feels good to be Reaper.

"You've gotta pull out right now," Sombra says over the communicator. She's up on the jet, waiting for the extraction, a couple hundred feet above Reaper and Widowmaker tangoing on the museum floor with Winston and Tracer.

"Why?"

"We got company up here!"

Finally.

Widowmaker is between Winston and Tracer; she's lost her rifle. Reaper watches her spring to her feet and launch a zipline up, and he becomes black smoke to hurtle himself after her. He seizes her line with one hand to use the other to lob bombs in their wake. _Fuck you, Monkey_. The drag on the line is rough, but they end up back through the break in the glass and up on the roof. 

"Lower the jet," Reaper barks. "Widow––"

 But Winston is on them again, a great hurtling mass of black hair and aerospace-grade armor bursting through the glass after them. Widowmaker flees, but Reaper is slow and fearless; he stands his ground and raises two shotguns from subspace, and he starts firing them as Winston approaches. Blast–– Winston keeps moving–– blast–– Winston lifts a great arm, fist curled to strike–– blast–– Winston roars and brings the fist down and–– _blast_. Winston's fist never connects. 

Winston drops, and Reaper steps aside as to not be crushed. By momentum alone, Winston slams into the glass roof, and there's an awful crack. The slanted glass panels of the roof aren't made to support a goddamn gorilla, but they don't break.

Not yet.

Reaper shoots the glass. 

It shatters into a million pieces under Winston's great weight. For a moment Reaper watches Winston's body tumble through the air, but Tracer shrieks his name from somewhere below Reaper; she's too fast to see. She blinks into his sight once, then twice, carrying one of the massive, trailing Overwatch banners from the ceiling. Mid-air, she gets it under Winston. By time her clock runs out, Winston's fall is broken, and he lands on the museum floor hard but likely with no further injury.

"Stupid monkey," Reaper says. Stupid girl, too. He feels confident Winston won't be getting up after him again, though, at least not quickly.

"Company!" Sombra repeats in his communicator.

He looks up. There's a second jet there, one of Overwatch's stealth jets. At first he'd thought it was Winston and Tracer's vehicle, but the hatch opens and a line drops out, and Reaper has to watch Jack fucking Morrison in a colourful jacket ride it down. He follows the line back up to see the tiny outline Ana in the doorway, and behind her, someone who must be Mercy.

Brilliant. All three of them.

"Keep Winston down!" Jack calls to Tracer. "Reyes is mine."

Reaper immediately wants to strike that name from Jack's mouth.

Jack's boots hit the roof hard. Reaper hopes the glass breaks and swallows him up and plummets him onto the marble museum floor, but it holds firm, and so does Jack. Jack's mask covers him from the eyes down, a navy blue protective frame around his jaw, a black brace encircling his neck. His jacket is zipped just below the collarbone, and Reaper can see the top of an old flex breastplate. He'll have to aim strategically.

"Trying for a best of… what is it now? Seven?" Reaper asks.

Jack's carrying a heavy pulse rifle. His finger is laid along the trigger guard.

"The last few encounters were draws," Jack replies.

"Good thing you really only need _one_ win, then," Reaper sneers.

"We'll see about that," Jack says, and then he fires.

Reaper smokes away as helix rocket splash batters where he'd been standing. When he comes back to a tangible form, it's several yards away, far from reach. When his vision focuses, clear of the haze, Jack isn't alone. Mercy is floating behind him, the incredible loft of her wings delivering her down.

So she's really here –– Mercy in Valkyrie, her _true_ self. Her golden halo glints in the sunlight and her great wings extend on each side of her. She is gleaming, glittering trouble. Between her hands is the Caduceus staff, its fins open and spinning, the funnel at the end host to a swelling yellow light. It's been a long time since he's seen that, either.

"Get Winston," Jack orders, as she floats down behind him.

" _Verstanden_ ," Mercy replies, and before her boots even touch the glass, she changes direction and glides down through the hole in the roof. Reaper is sorely tempted to follow, but he knows better. He's not going to be able to get back up without Widowmaker, and she's zipping back up to the jet now –– her rifle is still down on the museum floor, and she's useless without it.

He's just ticked that Mercy didn't even look at him.

"Can't stand on your own anymore, Jack?" Reaper calls. He has to focus.

"Don't act like you're a one-man army," Jack says. "You've got Talon behind you, don't you?"

"Not on this one," Reaper replies, but Sombra drops down next to him, rail gun in hand. She must look slight next to the products of the SEP, but she's swift and precise. Hopefully that's enough.

Jack twitches, a little cant of his eyebrows over the top of his mask that strikes a chord in Reaper. Under that mask, he must be smirking –– Jack did that, curled his lip all smug. Even if he isn't now, the thought is enough to ignite a fury in Reaper.

Reaper runs at Jack, shotguns raised. He fires, left, right, left, right –– Jack starts moving too, boots squeaking on the glass, posture adjusting to the inclines. A hundred feet below, the marble floor of the museum promises spilled brains should they go through. Reaper shoots low for that purpose. Maybe give Jack a surprise, but Jack knows better. Not because he's any good –– whereas Gabriel Reyes was a tactical genius, once, Jack was weak –– but because he has a tactical mask _telling_ him so.

They trade blows quick and then take distance again. Gunfights never last as long as fistfights do, and each knows to back off before they cripple each other before getting a killing blow.

Reaper feels a shot go by his head. He glances up to see Ana crouched in the doorway.

"Flank Ana," he says to Sombra over the communicator. Jack doesn't hear that part; a perk to a voice box wired right into your brain. "Before she makes things difficult for me."

"Working on it," Sombra replies. She vanishes, invisible; Reaper watches her move three steps in a straight line before she's gone. Not good.

Ana fires again. 

The sleeping dart misses Reaper by a long shot, but it wasn't for him. Sombra appears out of nowhere a second later, mid-motion. She drops like a fly, tumbling head-over-heels down the slope, and she lands hard in the crux of two glass panels, out like a light. Reaper looks down at her and back at Ana, who is reloading, and Jack, who is on the move. One versus two. Fuck. _Fuck._

_"Get up!"_ he snarls at Sombra, but she's out. 

Jack is hurtling across the roof at him. Tracer blinks up from the gap and Mercy shoots up after her. One versus four. He has to make a call.

God _damnit._

Reaper slides down the glass slope on his hip. He stops at the bottom with a foot hard against the glass and he loops an arm around Sombra's waist. He hefts her up on his shoulder.

They have to go.

Widowmaker tosses down a line.

"They're falling back; knock 'em down!" Jack bellows.

Reaper winds his grip tight around the cable; his feet dangle, and while one hand would be enough to support himself alone, Sombra's extra weight puts him under strain. It takes all his strength to keep them up with one hand. Jack opens fire again but Reaper is up and away, Talon's jet gaining height and reeling him in.

Damn.

 

* * *

 

When they reach the open bay door, Widowmaker reaches out to seize Sombra by the collar and heft her in. Sombra, now waking after being hurled around, groggily reaches back in turn. By time Reaper is sufficiently unencumbered to haul himself in, Sombra is crawling across the airship floor.

"She tracked me even though I was invisible!" she wheezes.

"They're Overwatch agents," Reaper says. "You're out of your league, little girl."

"Well, thanks for not leaving me behind!" she says. He ignores her to lean back out the hatch to see Jack ascending his own cable back to his jet. Damn. He thought they'd wait just a minute, give him enough time to get back down.

"But fine, whatever," Sombra says.

There's a beeping from the cockpit, the long, insistent buzz of another jet's hail.

"They're calling us," Widowmaker says. She sounds sour. It went poorly, so of course she's sour.

Reaper moves to the window and leans against it to look out. All he sees is sky until he notices the slightest ripple on the invisibility cloaking, the faintest outline of the jet. It would be imperceptible to the naked eye.

The console keeps beeping.

"Accept it," Reaper says, finally.

"Alright," Sombra says. She presses a button and Reaper turns to the dashboard.

Jack's face pops up on the screen.

"We're still finishing this, Reyes," Jack says, immediately. Reaper thinks it's the first time he's gotten a good look at Jack's face since the explosion; the scars across his face are deep and ugly, and Reaper feels an intense pride in looking at his work. 

"Ready to meet your maker, Jack?" Reaper replies.

"I am if you are," Jack says, voice dropping a pitch, lower, more gravelly. 

"Great. Where are we doing this? Who gets Mercy this time?"

"I don't have any mercy left in me," Jack replies. Reaper would smile if he could. Jack continues: "We're going to the old HQ. Let's get this done."

"Melodramatic, much?" Reaper sneers.

Jack reaches to close the communication. In that final second, Reaper sees Mercy in the background. She's looking at the camera, lips pursed, eyes hard.

In that moment, he thinks that she's going to turn on him.

"Are we going?" Sombra asks.

Reaper hesitates. He doesn't like the odds, with all of them together again, but the odds were never going to be good, anyway. As it is, they'll probably be together for a long time, and there's no picking off well-trained agents like them. He has to think about it: him and Jack at the old HQ. It's not that far from here, scarcely a thirty minute flight away.

"I am," he says, finally.

He looks at Sombra. Her pert little mouth is twisted into a frown, but she leans in like she's anticipating something. 

"I'll go with you," she says. "What? She's going to kill you. Someone has to watch your back."

He hadn't asked, much less commented, but fine. Reaper looks from her to Widowmaker, who stands with her arms folded and her chin high. For a long moment he looks at her. She's the voice of reason here, for obvious reasons. So much depends on her approval, as much as Reaper would never admit it out loud. She's possibly the closest thing to a partner in crime he could ask for. When she watches him in return, he doesn't feel quite so unnerved anymore.

"I'd like to take Amari's other eye," she says, finally.

Reaper nods.

They're going together, then, for better or for worse.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guess what? I got [my personal tumblr](http://quicksparrows.tumblr.com) up and running again.
> 
> We've got one more chapter with our crews and then an epilogue, bringing us to 11 total. Thanks for sticking with this belated NaNoWriMo party, haha.


	10. Kill Switch

.

 

 

Jack thinks back to a week or so ago, when he and Ana had talked about the Aeneid over drinks. He had felt more alive then than he had in several years, content in the knowledge that his people were still out there and could still be by his side, for one reason or another. But he'd also felt dread: Gabriel Reyes had been dead, to his knowledge, for several years. Reaper's appearance in his life had been a bad omen, a strange event that shaken this idea of a Soldier: 76, someone emancipated from his past.

Now, he knows that if anything of Gabriel Reyes still lives in this world, then Jack Morrison lived to put him back in the grave. Him, and him alone.

It seems fitting that they do it in the old Headquarters, where this chapter of their lives had truly began.

The jet's engines hum quietly under his feet. It puts him on edge, balancing out the coursing adrenaline of pulse fire and having his boots on the ground. It hadn't been a good day even before Winston went down and they lost Tracer to distracting the authorities. It wasn't a good day when he woke up after three hours' sleep, and it wasn't a good day when he sat by the window with Ana, tensely waiting for the curtain to open again. In truth, any day that involves Reyes is bound to be a miserable day. Today is just the worst it could get.

Still, in his mind, the ending to this is inevitable. He and Reyes cheated death many times over the years, and the destruction of the HQ had been the most prominent of them. It stands to reason that eventually they will meet their makers for good at each other's hands with no experimental procedures or technologies to save them. No sir –– there won't be any miracles today.

"You should consider ordering her to stay on the jet," Ana says, interrupting his train of thought.

Jack has had that thought several times already. He's not happy with her either, if he's being honest, but they still need her.

"With his back-up, he could take us without the extra support," Jack says. "He could kill us both."

"And what, exactly, do we have to fear from that?"

"I really can't think of a worse situation than Reyes not only winning, but having chewed through _you and I_ to get to everyone else. He'd be virtually unstoppable."

"I understand, but Angela's only going to get in the way if we let her come," Ana says. "Last night was nothing short of a disaster."

"I know, but we can deal with her after we've dealt with Reyes."

Ana is silent for a moment.

"She's fine, Ana," Jack says. "She's been out of a field for a long time, and she's a medic. It's not surprising that she's a little testy under pressure."

"You're making excuses for her. She's too personally involved."

"Aren't _I?"_ Jack says; he's snapping a little, tense under pressure, but he keeps his voice low. Ana doesn't get that part –– she wasn't there for the real downfall, for the end of Overwatch. "If personal involvement is an issue, why don't _we_ just hang it up?"

Ana sighs. Jack relents.

"I'm doing the best I can with what I have," he says, testily.

"I know, Jack," she says, soberly. "But it's just us, now."

Not for long it isn't. Jack looks past the cockpit door. He can hear Angela's heels as she makes her way up the steps. He gives Ana one last look before Angela reaches the doorway.

"Are we touching down?" she asks.

"As we speak," Jack says.

Angela's eyes widen and she walks past him, right to the front window. She leans against the dashboard to peer out, and her halo gently dings off the glass when she leans in too close. Jack watches her, and for a minute he tries to see her as someone other than the perpetually girlish, kind-hearted medical genius he'd known before. He tries to see her for who she may be now –– someone who, if Ana is correct, might lose her head. Maybe she's been alone for too long. Maybe being chased around the world by a maniac for years has damaged her perspective. She'd closed the curtains. There was _something_ to hide.

He's not sure if he can divorce the Angela he knew from the Angela he's looking at, especially watching her gasp at the sight of the ruins of Overwatch. She looks overwhelmed, emotionally. He could share that feeling, if he let his gaze linger too long on the sight outside the jet.

Either way, Ana is right. Last night was a disaster, successful mission or not.

"Angela," he says.

She leans her weight more on her hands to continue peering out. He steps up behind her and looks down at the ruins. It's been condemned for a while, but not so long that nature has managed to take it back. It's a wonder the UN didn't just bulldoze it. He's not sure how to feel about it.

"Angela," he repeats.

She turns to look at him.

"It's so sad, Jack," she says. "To think… everything we worked for, this is what it is now. We used to be so happy here."

"We were," he says, lower. His patience starts to wear thin. He watches her expression shift to some profound concern, and she doesn't just look _at_ him, suddenly, she looks _into_ him. She leans into his space, hands clasped in front of her.

"What is it?" she asks.  

"You need to tell me right now if there's anything else I should know, going into this," Jack says. "Anything at all. About Reyes, about you, about last night."

Angela's expression twitches towards a smile, but it doesn't last. There's nothing to smile about, not right now.

"Nothing of consequence, surely," she says.

He doesn't think so, but it doesn't really matter what he thinks. Nothing she could say would change the fact that it's time for Reyes to pass on. When he doesn't believe her and she seems to grow wary of it, she stands a little straighter and looks at him a little critically, too.

"Are you worried I'll throw the plan to protect him?" she asks. "That I won't be able to do it?"

"It crossed my mind," he says. He could be blunter, but it's there enough in his voice. She sees it on his face. 

"Jack," Angela says. "My old friend, my dearest commander, and my most esteemed colleague — you know that despite our disagreements towards the end, I never lacked in any love for you. I'm here to protect _you_."

"Angela," he says, tired. "Come on. That's not what I'm worried about."

"But you are," she says. "Jack, listen. You must dispel this idea that I am not every bit as prepared as you and Ana are. You must see me as the combat personnel I was trained to be if we are to succeed today."

Jack looks at her for a long hard minute. Her smile is fixed, resolved. He examines her as if he might find some indication of weakness, but there's nothing. Her expression is as firm as if it were carved from marble. 

"You closed the curtains last night," he says, finally. It feels ugly to bring up, but it can't go unsaid. Angela is unshaken. "You can't pretend that's not a reason to be suspicious."

"Our relationship is complicated," she says, understatement of the fucking _decade._ "I won't pretend it's wise, or professional, or even... unselfish, to have more tender moments with him. It must not make sense on the outside. But sometimes, Jack–– sometimes I can separate Gabriel Reyes from the man he is now."

_Christ._

"So who are we going to kill today?" Jack asks.

"Reaper," she replies.

" _Wrong,_ " he says. "We're going to kill Gabriel Reyes. You're going to handle that?"

Angela knows she's being tested. She must. She looks between Jack and Ana with a little knit to her brows and a tentative, brave bow to her mouth. He imagines her heart is breaking, but when she speaks, it's with surprising resolve.

"I put the kill switch in him myself, Jack," Angela says, finally. "I made that choice. I'm not happy about it in the slightest, but I'm going to move on with my life after this."

Jack looks to Ana, who frowns. Neither of them know Angela to act in her best interests, or know when to stand back and let go. Like anyone else, she has had her moments of selfishness, of narrow-sightedness, because Angela is human. What to do, then, when Overwatch has always demanded something _more_?

Jack doesn't feel confident in her, but he feels confidence in who he is, at least. Soldier: 76 doesn't have to worry about these things if he doesn't want to, and there's nothing more to really say about it.

 

* * *

 

Fully suited up, the three of them set out from the jet with the crumbling HQ looming over their heads. Soldier takes up the front, the pulse rifle balanced between both hands, his finger laid against the trigger guard. Ana follows behind, hooded, her rifle hung over one shoulder. Angela takes the rear, wings folded closed, her Caduceus staff balanced between her hands. Soldier glances back at her periodically. Every time he does, Ana looks at him without comment. She doesn't make faces, she doesn't judge, or question. She just _looks_ at him, and that's all he needs to know. He's going to deal with it.

And when he's not looking at either woman, he's eyeing the concrete tower. The glass panels and domes are long blown out, and if he thinks about it too much, he can imagine his own body smashing through them. Reyes had thrown him from the roof, at one point, hadn't he? The two of them had opened up a gaping maw in the middle of the building, at the foot of the tower. Soldier is dully surprised the tower even still stands on its own, but the open walkways and levels inside likely aren't.

"We should do this out on the lawn," Ana says, critically.

"They're already in the building," Mercy replies.

"How do you know?"

He wonders if she has him in her ear again, but she shakes her head, a short, sharp gesture limited by her black neck guard. She says: "If there are little corridors and paths for him to use, or even just gaps in the walls he can slip through, he'll have a clear advantage. He wants us inside."

It takes Soldier a second to consider the tactical advantages of being able to turn to smoke. It's not a pleasant feeling. The rubble puts him on edge, too. Reyes' career was built on working through omnic-ravaged city sectors and towns and complexes. Jack Morrison honed his skills there, but he hadn't _lead_ through it.

"He'd also rather do it where the building might collapse on us at any second," Soldier says. It comes out more bitter than he wants it to, but so be it. "Real great of him."

"Well, if it goes down, he'll be crushed too," Mercy says. She's peering up at the building. "He has to reform fairly quickly, and if he can't do it all at once, he'll be in trouble."

"It's happened before?" Ana asks.

"He got stuck in a door once," Mercy replies. "It was not pleasant."

Soldier doesn't want to imagine. Soldier doesn't want to think about it.

He crosses over the threshold of the main doors, stepping over the yellow plastic caution tape draped across the ground, still caught on one end where it's tied to the brickwork. No one's been here in years, save for some reckless teenagers spraying up the walls; the lobby used to have a great big mural, a red scene of people streaming amongst old-fashioned wheeled cars, and now it's all mucked over. A weather-worn scribble of a demon spreads great black wings over the scrawled text: _YOU ARE NOT PREPARED._

"Jesus," Soldier mutters, under his breath.

He used to walk these halls with unrivalled confidence –– Jack Morrison, the man who could stride into a mob and pick fights, who could cross international airspaces without clearance and shrug it off, who could drop into foreign nations and do his work while flipping off sanctions. Now, as Soldier, he feels that confidence brought to heel. 

He could die in here. So could Ana, and so would Mercy. They could all die for real, instead of just fading away into obscurity, secrecy. 

Reyes is just about the only man on this earth who could guarantee that.

"I'm going to the upper levels," Ana says. "See if I can find a good open spot to work from, over the central hall."

"Good," Soldier says. He reaches out a fist to her and she snorts, but she knocks her fist against his. Like old times. Mercy smiles a touch, and Soldier looks at her as Ana walks away. She says nothing, and so neither does he.

The walk into the building is twists and turns, as Mercy had predicted. The larger hallways are more intact, supported by the massive concrete pillars that had survived much of the blast, but enough rubble has fallen in to make navigation slow. Their boots crunch on the thick carpet of broken glass, and Mercy opts at times to just glide after him now and again as he makes quick work of their rocky path. Soldier imagines the upper floors are cleaner, but more precarious –– paths that lead to hard drops.

"Jack?" Mercy says, at one point.

"Hmm?"

"If you trust me to talk him down, you can spare yourself."

Soldier pauses.

"You want to take him on alone?"

Mercy pauses.

"It might be wise," she says.

"That's not going to happen," he says. "We'll get you close enough to activate the kill switch, and then I'll handle the rest." He pauses and lifts a finger at her, careful, in warning. "Stick to the plan."

She nods, but there's a tightness to her expression. He keeps walking. He hears the crunch of her boots as she follows him, and she says nothing more.

When they get to a doorway that leads into the great central hall, Mercy hangs back while Soldier does a little recon ahead. He climbs up a large, fallen hunk of concrete and pokes his head over. There's Reaper, standing some hundred feet away, on the edge of a concrete shelf. Soldier dully recognizes the remnants of a meeting room, a cluster of broken chairs and tables littering what's left of the floor. A UN banner is unfurled across the room, the end handing off the edge. Jack had gotten medals in that room before. He can see where he stood, in front of the now-tarnished gold emblem of the UN.

Soldier ducks back in. He looks to Mercy.

"He's here," he says. Mercy nods.

" _I have an eye on him as well,_ " Ana says, into his communicator.

When Soldier pokes his head back out, Reaper is looking at them. His hands are at his sides, each clutching a shotgun. They're as long as his forearms, and they're venting black smoke off the sides. The same blackness furls off Reaper's neck, the edges of his mask. Despite this, Soldier feels comfortable at this distance, even with Reaper's gaze on them. He knows what's coming.

"What do you think is going through his head?" Soldier asks. Might as well.

"He wants to kill us," Mercy replies. She doesn't even try to look at Reaper. 

Just what he expected to hear.

"Update?" Jack asks into his communicator.

_"Widowmaker up top, setting up. You're out of her L.O.S… I'll spook her out when the firefight begins. Nothing on Sombra yet."_

"She's going to be slippery," Jack says.

_"She shouldn't be too much trouble for us old soldiers."_

"Well, if this goes right, I won't be dealing with her at all. I need all my attention on Reyes. How comfortable are you taking on Widowmaker and Sombra alone?" Soldier asks.

She scoffs, so close to his ear he can imagine her breath.

_"About as confident as you are in your need for support,"_ she says.

"Good," he says.

_"Are you ready?"_ Ana asks.

"Born ready," he says. "Mercy?"

He glances back at her.

She just nods.

 

* * *

 

When Reaper starts at them from across the great hall, Soldier has this thought, this nasty, rankling little thought:

He is duty-bound to kill a man he once thought he would build a new world with.

As a young man, he had held himself to his commitments without pause. He had thrown himself into the task of leading Overwatch relentlessly. He had been blinded, in a way, by a sense of honour, incapable of imagining his own people prepared to break with him. He had thought, for a long time, that Reyes understood his sense of duty, and that they were the same.

Not so. 

Unlike Reyes, he has always owned his mistakes. He has always taken responsibility for his violences, his sacrifices, his choices. He has doubted himself in the years since, wondered if there was another path he could have taken, but now he knows for sure. He lets his past go. He won't let it destroy him.

This man calling himself Reaper is a different kind of man.

"You're not going to kill me, Jack," Reaper says, on approach.

"You sure about that?" Soldier asks. The question pops off his lips like nothing, thoughtless. "I could have just had Mercy finish you off last night, but I wanted you for myself."

A poor choice of words, perhaps; he watches Reaper lift his bony chin with _pride_.

"Mercy?" Reaper repeats, glittering and dangerous. "You really _should_ have had Mercy do it." His head turns to Mercy, his voice almost _coy:_ "It'd be fitting, all things considered."

"I heard your sob story already," Soldier replies. "You want to cry about it first?"

"Sob story?" Reyes says. There's a little tremble to his shoulders, a _chuckle_.

"You heard me," Soldier replies. "But I'm a good a person as any to put an end to this."

Reaper just fires on him. Soldier feels the spray but he grits his teeth through the pain, because he immediately feels Mercy's beam hit him. The light penetrates him and he feels the odd invisible tug at the base of his spine. It radiates warmth within him, and in those glorious first few seconds, the pain dissipates, his posture firms. Good. And then he feels the surge change, a tingling spreading through his muscles, a springiness in his flesh –– even better.

"You're ready!" Mercy calls. Her voice is close, right behind him.

Soldier doesn't hesitate. He opens fire. Reaper rears back under the spray, giving up ground as fast as his stride can cover it, and though Reaper keeps firing, Soldier doesn't feel it –– the beam moves back to warmth, to the press ahead. The sound of the Caduceus beam rings in his ears. It's a sound he's only heard in his daydreams for years, a steady hum that rises in pitch with his heartbeat. Soldier fires on.

Reaper turns to smoke and furls away, but Soldier tracks him. He counts it off, counts the seconds. With the heavy pulse rifle slung low and aimed carefully, he fires off helix rockets. Soldier watches Reaper drop back to a human form and try to run, but his hulking figure is slow, lumbering. The rockets connect, and with a howl, Reaper goes down, guns clattering away in the blast. But what kind of man moves like that? Who can do that and truly say they are more ghost than man, a man who _should_ be dead?

Soldier sprints in to close some of the distance, and he lines up his rifle with Reaper's head. Reaper pauses, on his knees still. He doesn't try to get up.

" _Don't get cocky with him, Jack_ ," Ana says, in his ear. " _He's not going down that easy––_ "

There's sniper fire overhead; the cursors on Soldier's visor whirl; Widowmaker is in his peripherals for a fraction of a second before Ana scares out of her nest with a missed shot. Soldier hears the sound of Mercy's wings springing to action, and golden light envelopes them both when she lands in front of him –– an overshot landing. _Move back,_ Jack wants to warn, but Reaper still doesn't move; anyway he even slackens slightly, sitting back on his heels, shoulders curved in a great, depressed arc. He could wraith, or shadow-step, or _something_ , but Soldier knows he's waiting for fire to dodge.

Soldier's finger slips off the trigger guard and to the trigger proper, and he squares himself up for the recoil.

"Jack, wait!"

He releases the trigger; Mercy moves in front of his rifle. She looks back at him –– deliberate, knowing. _Kill switch_ , he thinks, satisfied. They won't have any problems with wraithing around after that.

Mercy steps right into Reyes' reach. Soldier still feels an equal measure of disgust and dread as she reaches out for him, but Reaper doesn't move, not yet.

"Gabriel, forget what he just said," Mercy says, holding a hand out to him as he crouches at her knees. "Your quarrel is with me now, not Jack. How about we settle this, just you and I?"

Soldier's jaw tenses involuntarily, but this much is a part of the plan.

Reaper stands, quite abruptly; as he moves to his full height, he doesn't quite bend at the knee so much as _furl upward_ in inky darkness, and solidifying again just as quick. His mask turns to Mercy in one precise turn of his neck. Mercy keeps that hand out to him. Her Caduceus staff is tight in her other hand, slightly behind her back. Reaper knows it's there –– as if one could ever truly hide it, large and winged as it is –– but whether he looks at it, Soldier can't say.

"Somehow I don't think Jack _wants_ to be left out," Reaper replies, his voice a low crackle. He's looking at Soldier; Soldier can feel it, those black hollows boring into his skull.

"Wouldn't it be easier?" Mercy asks Reaper. "I know you're tired. You don't want to have this fight."

Reaper steps forward, pressing into Mercy's space. She stands firm, but there's so little space between them that Soldier hears the dull clink of her breastplate against the metal of his buckles.

"Mercy," Soldier says, warning. She's not supposed to draw this out. She's supposed to get close, use the kill switch, and––

" _She's not going to do it. Get her out of there, Jack_ ," Ana immediately says in his communicator.

He doesn't know if she has a clean shot if things go wrong. He can't ask.

Mercy turns to look over her shoulder. Soldier almost surges forward to grab her when he sees the perfect moment for Reaper to grab her, but Reaper doesn't move. Soldier's heartbeat picks up with each second Mercy spends with her back turned.

"Give me one chance, Jack," she says, and Soldier feels a dull fury. _Kill switch, goddamnit! Kill switch!_ She looks back to Reaper. "Gabriel. Listen to me. You won't get amnesty, but perhaps –– perhaps we could bring you back to Gibraltar. You'd be in our custody, but I could––"

Reaper laughs. Soldier could, too.

"This kind of pleading didn't work last time, Mercy," Reaper says. "What makes you think it'll work now?"

_Last time._ Soldier feels a little something in his gut. But there's no time to reminisce when she gets a hand on Reaper's cheek and the other at his waist, and to Soldier's dull surprise, Reaper slides an arm around Mercy in turn. A hand goes to the back of her neck, his clawed fingers resting just on the edge of her body armor. Reaper is still for a moment, and Soldier is positive their eyes are meeting over Mercy's shoulder, even if he can't see for sure.

" _Mercy!_ " Soldier repeats.

Reaper's figure is hulking, and even with the Valkyrie suit's wings, he's so much bigger than her that Mercy's artifically slim waist looks _breakable_.

"It's okay," Mercy says, but she sounds wary, too. Soldier feels his gut turn when she runs a thumb across his 'cheek', black gloves on bone enamel. He sees her elbow moving as her arm slides up his back. _Kill switch,_ Soldier thinks, urgently, as if he could beam it into her head with thought alone. _Kill switch, Mercy! Kill switch!_

" _Jack!_ " Ana's voice crackles over his communicator again. " _Pull her back or I'm taking the shot._ "

Soldier steps forward. As he does, Reaper curls a fist around the spine of one of Mercy's wings, and with superhuman strength he tears it from her back. Metal frame, wiring and outer housing crumbles like sand under his grip, and Mercy gasps, spine arching in resistance, but it's fruitless. She is spunin his arms to face Soldier, Reaper's massive arm across her chest, still clutching the wing. The other holds a gun to her head. Wherever it came from, conjured up from some abyss, it's red hot, venting heat out of the sides.

Soldier watches alarm pass over Mercy's face. He's sure he's wearing some himself, under his visor. Overconfidence is always punished.

"Letting you drape yourself on me works _every_ time," Reaper croons, and he follows it with a short chuckle. He nudges her, shifting his arm. "Get down."

Mercy kneels. Reaper still has a hand wound around her broken wing, a few cables still tethering them together. He holds her to him and yet presses her skull forward with the shotgun barrel.

"You _never_ learn," he tells her. "And even stupider –– he should know better than trying to let you pull something like that. Some leadership, hmm?"

Soldier hefts his rifle. Ana has a clear shot –– she absolutely must, without Mercy in the way –– but Ana can't kill him in one. Maybe neither of them can, at least not in a way that won't take Mercy out in the process, either by helix splashback or Reaper getting a shot off.

"Let her go, Reyes," Soldier says. 

He knows Reaper won't. Reyes never took prisoners. If she's under his gun, she's as good as dead. Mercy knows it, too.

"This isn't how you want to do this," Soldier insists. "You want to do this man to man. We'll stow her on the jet, and if you can get through me, I'll be too dead to care what you do to her."

Reaper laughs. _Laughs._

"Oh, _Jack,_ " he chuckles. "Don't you want to know about how human I am _now?_ She can tell you all about it."

"Just take him down, Jack, I can survive it," Mercy says.

_Like hell you can._

" _Listen,_ Jack," Reaper croons. "She'd die if it meant not hearing me say it. Doesn't it make you curious?"

It does.

Mercy shakes her head, vigorously, her ponytail brushing over the top of the gun.

"Go on," Reaper orders. "Tell him. Tell him what you did to me."

"I saved your life," she says.

Reaper slams her forward, forcing her to put a hand out to steady herself; she's already off-balance with her wings, but now he sees her strain to keep upright without moving too far off the barrel.

"It doesn't matter, Mercy," Soldier says. "Say whatever you need to, whatever makes him happy. He's still not getting out of here alive, and you're coming home with me."

Reaper just laughs.

"Answer!"

Mercy lifts her head. She looks into Soldier's eyes and he watches something behind them steel, the subtle tension of her jaw as she pulls herself together. Reaper shifts to stand closer over her, a knee on either side of her hips. She inhales sharply.

"I am responsible for Reaper's current condition," Mercy says, finally. "After he was removed from my care, the United Nations decided it would be in their best interests for him to _pass away._ They didn't want to prolong the dragging of their name through the mud during years of prosecution for a man who…"

"A man who _what_?" Reaper asks, pointedly. "Louder, for the class."

Mercy inhales deeply.

"A man who didn't seem likely to make it anyway," Mercy finishes, raising her voice. "So I took things into my own hands and I intervened."

Soldier hears Ana breathe in sharply, and if his breath weren't suddenly frozen in his chest, he would too. Mercy looks utterly resolved, terrifyingly sure of herself. Soldier watches her carefully. Her fear of death has always been forceful, compulsive, but––

"Keep going," Reaper says. "Tell them what you did."

"I don't know what you want me to say," Mercy replies, sharper. "Rehabilitation is excruciating, Gabriel, but you pushed through the pain, and you got to live. It would have been careless to let you die from something you could easily best––"

Reaper shifts his gun left just to the side of her head and fires a warning shot; Soldier steps back to not lose his toes, but Mercy gasps in pain and lifts a hand up from the ground, away from the sting of the spray. He swiftly moves the gun back to the base of her skull.

"That's _not_ what happened!" he snaps.

Reaper jerks her by the broken wing, forcing her to sit up a little higher by pulling it straight up. His voice drops to a hiss: "Tell him how for _three years_ , you kept me locked in a private lab, while the world thought I was _buried_ , while you lied and told the UN you were keeping your nose clean."

Mercy's eyes fall to the ground before her but her confidence does not waiver. If she feels remorse, she doesn't show it –– she must, Jack thinks, she _surely_ must. Her mouth is set in a firm line. Soldier feels his stomach drop.

"Tell him how I couldn't see the sun... how I subsisted on IV fluids and oxygen... how for three years you _tinkered_ and _puttered around_ and treated me like a _science project_ ," Reaper snarls. His voice drops off into almost unintelligible tones –– pure, spitting rage.

"Reyes," Soldier says, finally, loudly. He feels the phantom sting of his own enhancements, the sickness, the pain it had taken to add so many inches, to broaden his back, his shoulders. The sleepless nights spent violently ill, the bizarreness of learning to use his new body all over again, like an oversized pubescent boy. The endurance tests. The needles and injections and machinery and chemicals. It'd been bad, but Gabriel had been there, and it hadn't been _so_ bad––

"Tell him how you begged me to cooperate!"

Soldier can't fathom. Mercy doesn't raise her eyes. He feels Reaper looking at him, but he doesn't have anything more to say. Reaper wants a reaction, and Soldier isn't in the business of negotiating with terrorists. He can take Mercy to task later, deal with it after.

" _Keep him talking_ ," Ana says. " _I can't get a clean shot without leaving Widowmaker wide open to take a shot, and I keep having to fend off Sombra._ "

_I'll have to do it myself,_ Soldier thinks.

"Tell him," Reaper says, "tell him how I'd still be there now if I hadn't overpowered you to escape. Tell him how you begged me to come back and let you finish, but I wouldn't. But you won't, will you? Because you don't see it that way."

"I don't," Mercy says, finally.

Reaper pauses. Mercy breathes in through her teeth.

"I just recall that it was me by your bedside, keeping vigil over you to make sure you made it through the nights," Mercy says. "And how you told me you still had things to live for. _People_ to live for."

Reaper shoves her forward so that she falls on both hands, and he flings the broken wing aside. Mercy leans back on her elbows, fists curling as he forces her down so she could almost kiss the rubble. She bows her head with grit teeth and then lifts it again.

"I recall that it was me who spoon fed you when you refused all nourishment, supported you as you learned to walk again––"

"Mercy, don't," Soldier says.

Mercy continues, louder: "I encouraged you when you wanted to die instead of push through what was only temporary! That was me, Gabriel, because you eschewed all others!"

"You _denied_ me all others!" he snarls.

"I'm hearing _all_ of this, Gabe," Soldier says, louder. _Gabe._ It pops out like nothing, but he doesn't have time to think on it. "But you followed her around for years, didn't you? If all this is true, and she did this to you, why didn't you just kill her years ago?"

Mercy looks startled. Soldier keeps his eyes fixed on Reaper, jaw set.

" _Lining up_ ," Ana says. That's his best girl, always on time.

"Because it's not just killing _her,_ " Reaper says. "Now it's making sure _you_ know what _you_ did."

"What _I_ did?" Soldier repeats. "I don't follow."

" _You_ brought her to Overwatch!" Reyes snarls.

" _Now_ ," Ana says.

Reaper jerks aside by the head, suddenly, the sharp whistle of Ana's sniper rifle depositing a bullet in his shoulder, in the gap between his body armor. Soldier doesn't hesitate; he lunges forward, leaping over Mercy's prone figure to tackle Reaper. It connects, shoulder first, the sturdy end of his pulse rifle jammed into Reaper's gut, and he slams him to the ground. Reaper fires, but his aim is already off.

Soldier opens fire, even as they hit ground.

Reaper snarls, but he fights back too.

"Jack!" Mercy shrieks.

Soldier doesn't break contact for a second, not even when the clip empties out. Reaper manages to throw him then, and Soldier doesn't get a chance to reload, not in such close quarters, not with Reaper thrashing back. There's no guns this close, but even with as many rounds of pulse munitions in Reaper's gut, Soldier knows it won't be easy.

"Mercy now!" Soldier hollers.

Reaper chuckles, swings, connects –– Soldier takes it to his face and he hits the ground. He's up fast but at the same time as Mercy finally gets back to her feet, hauling a broken wing and Caduceus back in hand. The golden beam connects and Soldier feels his body surge, but it's not what he wants. 

He needs the switch.

"The switch!" he snarls. "The switch!"

He slams Reaper down again. Reaper manages to get over him, catching him across the jaw with an elbow. He's fast, big –– he moves like smoke and Soldier never feels his hits quite connect.

"MERCY!" 

Again, and again.

Reaper hits him in the throat, then the jaw, again and again; Soldier finds himself slammed to the ground, Reaper straddling him at the waist, laying into him. When he tries to grapple or throw Reaper off, nothing happens, just smoke, just black smoke, just a total lack of friction, and he feels like he's _choking_ , then––

Reaper stops cold like he's been hit over the head, and Soldier lands a hit square in Reaper's jaw. His knuckles scream against the hard mask, but it cracks. When he follows up with his left, the crack widens. Reaper, stunned, falls back, and Soldier gets out from under him.

Reaper looks winded.

"What did you do?!" Reaper snaps, and he repeats it again, and turns to see Mercy, but he's sprawled on his knees. She's back on her feet and she stands over him now, tall and imperious. Her golden glow is lopsided. Soldier breathes a sigh of release, even as his face burns and swells. _Finally._

She has one hand on the staff and the other on her blaster. She holds the staff forward, inches from his face.

(" _Found Sombra,_ " Ana says. _"I lost Widowmaker. Keep moving._ ")

"Stand down," Mercy says, firm, and patient, and kind, and _fair,_ but her face is red and her breastplate is dirtied and her broken wing trails behind her. "Stand down, Gabriel."

"No!" he snaps back, and he tries to lunge up at her, but she takes two steady steps back and he just falls on his elbows at her feet. He wheezes. Incredible, how the body goes. If she'd done it sooner––

"I could still fix you," Mercy says. "I would forgive everything you've ever done to _me_ over the years, if only you _asked_."

Mercy looks down at him. Blood dribbles down from her nose and catches on her upper lip. Her fingers flex on Caduceus' shaft.

"You _can't_ heal him," Soldier says, louder, pointed. He's not sure if he's ordering it or pleading it. "You can't heal him, Mercy. He's too far gone."

And maybe she pushed him there.

But she lines her finger up with the trigger on her blaster instead. 

"I'm sorry," Mercy says.

He's not sure if she's talking to him or Reaper, and it sends a terrifying chill down his spine. Soldier watches Reaper lift himself at least to his knees, still doubled at the waist. He's breathing heavily already, loud and obvious, coat straining at his back as he heaves.

"This is it? This is the end?" Reaper asks her. "Submit to you or die?"

Mercy nods, just barely. The muzzle of her blaster rests against his forehead. Without her, there's no coming back from this. Soldier rounds the two of them, back to where he's almost between them.

(" _Sombra's down_ ," Ana says. " _Coming back._ ")

"Let me do it," Soldier says to Mercy, opening his hand for the blaster. "You can't do this, Angela. We talked about this, remember? You asked Ana and I to take care of him."

In a sick way, he wants it for himself. It's always been his job.

Her eyes are sad but resigned.

"Jack," she says. "I'm sorry."

She squeezes her eyes shut and moves her finger to the trigger.

"Angel––"

There's sniper fire. Soldier ducks, instinctively, and Mercy just drops. He watches her crumple, head first and then spreading through her lower body, hand slackening on her blaster. It hits the ground before she does; Jack surges to catch her, and he does, just barely.

She falls slack in his arms. Her eyes are open, rolled back into her head. Her eyelids jerk like old machinery, and a noise bubbles up from her throat: _oop_.

Soldier turns, following trajectory. Up on the ruined balcony of the next floor is Widowmaker. She kneels, her sniper rifle at her shoulder, the glowing red eyes of her scope over the top half of her face. Soldier watches as she sits back on a heel and lowers the gun. When the scope rises, her expression is neutral, passionless. She doesn't make an effort to take another shot. 

For a beat, Soldier just stares at her. He wonders if she knows it's over. And it is over–– he watches Ana appear across from her and shoot her with a dart, and he watches Widowmaker collapse––It's just over.

Soldier lays Mercy down. When she gently rolls from his arms, her head lols to the side and he sees the entrance wound, clean and barely oozing blood. It's the cleanest he's ever seen. She flops on her side in the rubble.

When he exhales, he feels some of his life go with it. He turns sharply.

"Reyes," he says, looking down.

He stands over Reyes, tall, his shoulders back. He reaches for his belt to take his sidearm, but it's gone. He looks at his rifle, abandoned on the ground several feet away on Reyes' other side. Reyes is on his hands and knees, and Soldier watches as he collapses down to his forearms instead.

_He looks pitiful,_ Soldier thinks, but he didn't ever want that thought to cross his mind. It would be better to cling to the image of Gabriel Reyes he keeps at the back of his head, the one who is surely dead by now. Dead enough that Jack's memory of him can't be tarnished any further.

But this man, this heaving, choking man slumped at his feet, is sad.

Jack's not sure what spurs him to it, but he drops to his knees in the rubble and he seizes Reyes under the arms and hauls him onto his lap. Reyes is starting to shake violently, and Jack _almost_ cradles him, though he's hesitant to do so — it's been so many years, and it is a long jump from strife to succor –– but it's all Jack can do. Reyes doesn't take it easily, and he fights. Jack clamps an arm around him.

"Oh," he utters, under his breath. Reyes is still hissing violence and profanities. He curses. His voice box crackles with the effort put forth, the attempt to verbalize too much in that moment. He keeps slipping over his words before he can get them out. His thighs tense as he pushes up on his feet, as if to crawl away, but he doesn't have the strength, so he collapses again, and again. 

Jack's arms are around him firmly, but it takes strength to keep them there. Reyes is like an animal.

"Reyes, breathe," Jack orders. He struggles to keep a firm hold, to stop the struggle entirely. "Breathe, damnit, get yourself together— die with dignity––"

"––Kill me!" Reyes hisses. 

"Just breathe, man—"

"Just _kill_ me, don't torture––  hasn't it been _enough?_ Haven't I suffered enough?!"

"I'm not torturing you," Jack says. God, it's so _quick_. "I just–– you're _dying_. Go easy, soldier."

"Fuck you!" Reyes spits. He chokes again.

"God _damnit_ , breathe," Jack says, and when Reyes knocks his jaw, he catches sight of Mercy's prone body out of the corner of his eye. He sees her unspoken dream of a rational, saved Gabriel Reyes strangle itself.

Reyes claws at Jack's face, but his strength is waning. He protests still: "No! NOT YET!"

Jack pins Reyes under an arm. The mask keeps on spitting profanities. Gabriel himself –– god, is whatever under there even Gabriel? –– slowly ceases to thrash in Jack's arms, instead falling limp, breath heaving. Jack thinks, uncomfortably, of the last time he held him, when he really was Gabriel. With the top of Gabe's head so close to his chin now, it's difficult not to.

He remembers holding Gabriel like this the same night he plied Angela with promises. Promises about her work, a freedom to change the world. He'd run his fingers over Gabriel's shaved head, bumped his nose against his scalp. They'd laughed about things, about their great new plans. Angela had, too.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," he says, despite himself. "What happened to us? I pushed Angela to _this_ , I pushed you away, I––"

Gabriel just ventilates.

"You did," he says.

"I did, man," Jack says. He's not sure if he fully believes it, but Gabriel stills just the slightest bit. 

"I hope… you live with it… for the rest of your life," Gabriel's voicebox rasps, somewhere, and then he falls still, limp. The broadness of his back weighs heavily on Jack's thighs, and his head drops against the crux of Jack's arm. Jack shakes him, almost instinctively –– fuck you, _fuck you_ –– but Reaper doesn't move.

He's gone.

With blocky, fumbling fingers, he reaches for the Reaper mask. He finds the edge and starts to lift it away, but it's firmly sealed. It doesn't give save where the long crack strains, and he doesn't want to break it off. The breath leaves Jack's lungs. He feels a coldness creep through him. What's under it, even? What spooked Ana, what pushed Mercy to such actions–– but surely it's still _him_ , though, isn't it?

"Come on––" Jack says. "Let me say goodbye, god damnit!"

His teeth grit. His eyes sting. Jack Morrison hasn't cried in years, not since Ana died, but with Reyes in his lap and Angela some feet behind him, it hits him. He hauls Reyes up closer, wraps his arms around his head and curses. The choke rises in his throat, and he feels shaken awake, burning to leave this place, burning to leave this life behind him.

He hears Mercy _moving,_ suddenly, dragging herself behind him, but he can't bring himself to turn. 

Her voice comes raw and ugly: "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so sorry."

It doesn't matter. It's all over.

 


	11. Epilogue / That Night

.

 

 

 

Mercy makes her way up the hill with resolve in her heart.

It's a trudging walk, though. The snow is fresh, and she didn't exactly dress for the weather. Her heeled booties sink in the wet snow, right up to her ankles. Her thick black stockings are barely any protection either, but no matter. All she feels is a dull chill against her skin, her innate temperature regulation cloaking her. 

Up the hill, she can see Jack and Ana, standing shoulder to shoulder. Both are wrapped in thigh-length parkas and scarves, the tops of their boots tall enough to hold off the snow. They match — _that's so funny,_ she thinks. So much has changed but the two of them will never compromise on some things. She wonders if they bought them together, conspiring on their outfits, or if they surprised each other and laughed at their own predictability.

If they survive to one hundred, they'll be together still.

"Hello," she calls. "Sorry I'm late!"

Both turn, mirroring each other. Ana glances at her watch.

"By mere minutes, it seems," Ana says. "It's good to see you, Angela."

Mercy smiles, but it feels a little tight. She reaches them and Ana immediately pulls her into a warm hug. Over her shoulder, Mercy makes eyes at Jack, and he just stares back dispassionately. His eyes rove up and down her, and a great fog rises from his breath. There will be no twirling in the snow today.

"What on earth are you wearing?" Jack asks. When Ana releases her to his arms, he hugs her as if his real intention is to keep her warm. "Jesus, Angela. You grew up with snow. You should know better."

"I'm fine!" Mercy says, as Jack holds her at arm's length against to scruntinize her. It's been some months, after all. "One of the many advantages of modern medicine –– the cold doesn't bother me at all."

"And what did you do to your hair?" Jack asks. He's only ever seen her get blonder, over the years.

"Not military regulation, is it?" she asks, smiling. She wears her bangs back these days, too, and she's removed the studs from her jaw. It's helped to keep her profile lower, less recognizable, particularly in a time where the UN is investigating Overwatch's semi-successful return. 

"No, but it looks nice," Ana says. She catches a strand between her fingers, runs the pad of her thumb over it. "I didn't think purple was your colour."

"I didn't either, but anything darker looked too harsh," she admits, turning her eyes to Jack. "Do you like it?"

Jack just hums under his breath, non-commital, disinterested. She looks at him and wishes she could tease out a smile, but it's fair for him to still be mad. It's only been six months, and men like him hang onto slights for a lifetime.

"Well," Mercy says, but she doesn't have anything to say after that. She watches Ana give Jack a stern look, but it changes nothing.

"Let's just get to what we came here for," Jack says.

They all look to compacted snow under their feet, and the little headstone there. Gabriel's grave is unobtrusive, befitting a man who had been pronounced dead a long time ago, and a man whose crimes often eclipsed his past heroics. Buried in snow, the headstone is little more than a piece of concrete from the HQ; it was chosen for the chunk of rebar sticking out of the top. The rebar is bent into a cross, but it's a little lopsided; Jack had shaped it with his bare hands.

Six months feels like it's been a long time.

"It's such a shame we couldn't bury him in LA," Ana says, breaking the silence. "I never visited him there. It probably would have meant a lot to him, to show us his city or take us to a game… but there was never time in those days."

"I never went to LA either," Jack says. 

Ana looks to him in genuine surprise.

"Really?" she says.

"Really," Jack repeats.

"He didn't invite anyone, did he?" Mercy asks.

"He did," Jack says. "A few times. But like Ana said… there was never time, and he never got along with Rein or Torbjorn much, and Liao –– well. He got to be a hard person to be friends with."

"Hmm," Ana hums. She'd given up before Jack; Mercy knows that for sure. Ana says: "A moment of silence, then. For Gabriel."

Jack and Ana both bow their heads, hands in front of them, and Mercy does the same. 

She tries to imagine what his place looked like. There would be dust around the baseboards, probably, a mark of a life lived elsewhere. Maybe he would keep posters on the wall, and have an empty stand for a guitar. The kitchen would never be stocked properly, and there would be old plastic take-out containers with frozen home-made meals in the freezer, always forgotten until it was too late to thaw out. His bed would have some thin, flattened old duvet. He'd have a wardrobe of sweatpants, hoodies and old military fatigues, all in the same colour palette. An expanded version of the rooms she'd visitied in various Overwatch headquarters, at various Watchpoints. Bedrooms on military territory.

She pushes the thought away.

A minute feels so long.

"This is the last time we're doing this," Jack says, finally. "I'm ready to move on."

Ana nods. Mercy isn't so sure. She likes to think she'll visit again, but she doubts she'll have the chance to. It's tricky getting here, especially for three people living relatively under the radar.

"Have you been reading the news about Amélie?" Mercy asks.

"We have," Ana says, a little terse. "I'm glad she's co-operating, and I'm relieved her capture proved an excellent bargaining chip for Winston and Tracer. I don't have much hope for her, but I'd hope it would at least bring some comfort to Gérard, in death…"

Mercy nods. Ana had never liked Amélie, and she still wears it on her sleeve, but Mercy would like to think that those wounds can heal as well, now that the Widowmaker has been captured away from Talon. Maybe there's a cure for the things that have happened to her, with enough time and therapy. But then again, perhaps she shouldn't speculate on such things. Amélie was never her patient.

"And Sombra?" Mercy asks.

Jack sighs, heavily.

"We made an enemy out of her," he rumbles. He doesn't elaborate. Mercy can imagine; as little as she knew about Sombra, few people escape close brushes with Overwatch without becoming so polarized. Jack shrugs listlessly under the shoulders of his heavily padded parka. "She'll be tracking us for years to come if we don't put her down, I'm sure."

In a way, Mercy hopes not, but she keeps that close to her heart. There's been enough love lost between them.

"She's gone rogue from Talon, at least," Ana says. "Three of Talon's most notorious agents, out of their network. Not bad work for people of our age, hmm?"

Mercy nods.

Jack looks at her.

"Has she found you?"

"A few times," Mercy admits. "She's not cut out for mercenary work."

Jack snorts and nods. Mercy's sure that if her encounters with Sombra have ended in her favour, then Jack's have been nothing short of painful.

"Poor girl," Ana remarks, and that's the end of that topic.

How long can they keep this conversation stumbling? Mercy feels the snowmelt seeping right into her boots, squishing under the balls of her feet. She pockets her hands and looks at these two remarkable people, some of her favourite people on this planet. 

The time comes to be honest with them.

"That's something I wanted to talk to you about," Mercy says. 

Jack and Ana look at her and then exchange a look. Mercy pauses and takes a deep breath. _Courage, Mercy. Courage._

"I am going to be turning my research over to UN by the end of the week, along with my wings, and the Caduceus staff… and myself."

"Angela," Ana says, voice rich with concern. "You'll go to prison. Likely for the rest of your life."

"I will," Mercy says.

Tears sting at her eyes but it's just the cold. She wipes at them with the thumbs of her mittens, and she smiles.

"You could do so much more good in the world, still," Ana says. "Have you considered coming with us?"

Mercy nods.

"I could," she agrees. "But it wouldn't be just. Wouldn't it, Jack?"

Jack is looking at Gabriel's grave. He looks older than ever, and there are deep lines around his face that had never been there before. He'd always had a substantial brow, one that Gabe had always made fun of, and now it looks even larger with his hairline creeping back even further. His mouth is set in a hard line.

"It wouldn't be," he says. "If that's what you need to do, do it. Justice is its own reward."

She lets out a single breath of a laugh. So like him!

"It is!" she says. "I hope it brings me some peace."

They all lapse into silence.

"Well, then, I'm getting cold; I'm going to go start the engine," Ana says, finally. "I think this is goodbye, Angela." 

"You don't have to rush off," Mercy says.

"No, I think you two need a moment alone to say your goodbyes," Ana says.

She reaches to embrace Mercy again, perhaps for the last time, and Mercy pulls her close and kisses the crown of her head and breathes in the smell of Ana's hair. Ana's embrace is tight.

"Thank you," Mercy says. "Goodbye, Ana. I hope we meet again."

Ana kisses her cheek again and then walks away, boots crunching in the snow. Just the three of them now. All three of them silent, all three dead –– one moreso than the others.

Mercy looks to Jack. He's still staring at Gabriel's grave, and she watches his chest swell with one strengthening, deep breath. Her heart waivers, and swells, too –– she feels it could burst with love and sympathy and sorrow all at once.

"These past few months, I've sometimes wished I had been the one to hold him," she says, finally. "I thought _I_ should see him off after all these years... but it would have only upset him. It was better that it was you."

It is better that he died thinking he'd outlived her. Maybe that had made it more peaceful.

"Mercy," he says.

"Yes?"

He scruntinizes her for a moment, sober and serious. His breath is heavy, fogged on the cold air. He brings a hand up to take her just above her elbow, his fingers just firm enough to hold her there, as if she might fly away at conflict. She doesn't. She stands there, heart still swelling.

"I guess it was true, then, wasn't it?" he asks. "What he said, about…?"

She's wondered what she'd say to this question for months. In the aftermath, he hadn't asked. The wounds had been too fresh, too much. Now, though…

"It's an offense to lie to your commanding officers, isn't it?" she says, gently.

He lets her go. He looks away, anywhere but her, anywhere but at Gabriel's grave. Those lines on his face deepen.

"Overwatch pushed you too much –– _I_ pushed you," he says, rapidly, drained. "I didn't respect your boundaries, or what you wanted with your research, and instead…"

He waves a hand, dismissively. There doesn't seem to be many words left in him, though, and whatever's there vanishes on the cold air when he sighs again. It wouldn't change anything if he said it, anyway. It wouldn't undo anything that happened. 

"I don't blame you, Jack," she says, slow, soft.

"No," he says, tersely. "I can take responsibility for my role in this, too. You were still in check when Reyes was leading, and when I took the reins, I just…"

He shakes his head.

She wraps her arms around one of his, leaning in. He lets her, standing in stony silence, and he puts his other hand to her shoulder. This is as personable as it will ever be again, she feels, but he lets her. He stands there and he worries his teeth and he drowns his words with thought. There's nothing more to say, nothing that would change anything.

Somewhere along the way, things had slipped between their fingers. They'd missed some crucial warning signs, some indication that they'd gone too far down some path with no return.

It's almost dusk and her wings are starting to glow, rich and violet. When she looks up at him, he has gathered himself together a bit, and he reaches to palm her cheek, thumb away invisible tears. 

She watches him blink. His eyelashes are long and dark, shading his blue eyes.

"Jack," Mercy says, finally. "When you think about that night at Headquarters, when you and Gabe convinced me to join –– what do you think about?"

"That it was one of the best nights of my life," he says, finally.

Mercy nods.

"It was mine too," she says.

She just leans her cheek on his shoulder, and shifts to wrap his arms around her proper. 

There's nothing to be said after that.

 

* * *

.

 

 

_That Night_

 

 

Jack is a terrifying driver, if only because of his confidence. He takes the car around corners like he's testing to see how far the car will lean, and if they were on wheels, they most certainly would roll. Angela thanks human ingenuity for inventing propulsion engines; they're so much safer than the cars they'd ridden in as youths.

"Jesus," Gabriel says from the passenger seat. "I'm going to get sick if you keep doing that."

Jack grins at him; his cheeks dimple, and his eyes get the slightest little crow's feet. Gabriel looks completely unimpressed, and he only breaks Jack's gaze when Jack eases up off the gas.

" _Thank you._ Where are we going, exactly?" Gabriel asks.

"Uh––what was that place's name, Angela?" Jack asks.

"Which place?"

"I know where I'm driving, I just don't remember the name," Jack says. He eyes her through the rearview mirror. "It's in Langs—Langstrasse, maybe?"

"Your pronunciation is finally improving," Angela teases. "If only you could remember the name of the place, because I can't name every establishment in the neighbourhood."

"Langstrasse? It's not a club, is it?" Gabriel asks. "I thought we were just getting drinks. I don't want to see you dance, man."

"You don't have to dance, but let's get drinks _at_ a club, because it's darker and I don't want to deal with people tonight," Jack says.

 _Fair enough,_ Angela thinks. These Overwatch agents and their notoriety. She wonders if she could ever be notorious like that. She wonders what the pressure would be like. Would she dance at a club if she thought it would make the papers?

"We're Americans in Zurich, _off_ tourist season, and we look like _us_. I don't think lighting is going to make much of a difference."

"It's still _a_ difference."

"Yeah, and we won't be able to hear each other, and I'm going to get a headache. I have a meeting at 0900. So do you, for that matter."

"What would I have to talk to _you_ about, Grandma? I see you every day," Jack says. He grins at Gabe across the center console and jabs a thumb at Angela. "I'm going to talk to her all night."

Gabe snorts, but Angela sees that little tug at the corner of his mouth, tucked into the manicured edge of his goatee. They tease each other a lot; the moment they're out of official Overwatch or military territory, they're impossibly boyish and practically inseparable. 

"I'm not dressed for a club," Angela offers, for Gabe's sake. "Why don't we go to Dante again? You liked that last time."

"Too late, I've made up my mind," Jack says, even though it's absolutely not too late. They're still on the highway, the lights blipping over their heads. Gabriel just sighs, heavy but relenting, and Angela laughs to herself.

She'll make do.

 

* * *

 

Angela ends up happy for Jack's choice in venues by time they're at a table in the back corner of the club. It's early enough in the night that the dancing hasn't picked up yet, and most of the patrons are milling around downstairs, watching a performer lip sync to old pop songs and banter with the audience. Their table is short on one leg and it tips ever so slightly every time Gabriel leans his elbows on it. Angela has both of their knees touching her legs; the table is tiny, and these hulking American soldiers are relentless in taking up space. Jack bumps a foot against hers here or there, but she doesn't mind.

"… and by the way, because he's going to tell you otherwise: you _can_ sleep with your commanding officers," Jack says. He bats his eyelashes at her across the table, his chin in his hand. He's getting tipsy; amazing a man of his size can knuckle under to alcohol at all, or that the US military doesn't account for that in their programs. Jack drops his voice, conspiratorially: "Take it from me."

Angela laughs. She can't help it.

"I'm going to write you up if you ever say anything like that again," Gabe says. Despite how much he's drank, he's still remarkably assembled.

Jack grins and raises his eyebrows at Gabe, and then nudges Angela with his elbow.

"If you ever see me running extra laps…" Jack trails.

"I'll know why," Angela agrees. She looks to Gabe, who rolls his eyes.

"Do you pick on him?" she asks, pleasantly, playfully.

"Not any more than anyone else," Gabriel says, at the same time as Jack is taking a deep swig, and Jack has to pull it away to laugh.

"That's patently _false_ ," he says. "Are you at least going to pick on her, too?"

"Is Overwatch full of schoolyard bullying?" Angela asks. Gabriel waves her off, dismissively. _No._

"Maybe I will, and maybe I'll just start leaving Jack alone entirely," he says, to Angela, his warm eyes on her alone. He jabs a thumb in Jack's direction. "You know, this one is better on his feet when he's frustrated."

Jack snorts.

"Sick," he says. And then: "So what kept you late? Anything interesting in surgery today?"

"Oh," Angela says. "Yes, actually! It's a case I've been working on for a while now. We're rebuilding a man who was decaptitated."

"Decapitated?" Gabriel repeats, drink halfway to his mouth. "And he _lived?_ "

"He did," Angela says, and she can't help but let a little pride spill out. "It'll be a difficult recovery, certainly, but he's survived, and he's surviving well."

"How do you reattach a _head_?" Jack asks.

"How the hell does anyone answer that over _drinks_?" Gabriel interjects.

Angela laughs, and laughs. She says: "Well, it's easy, in principle, but it was a long surgery."

"You did it _tonight?_ "

"No, no," she says. "Tonight we were focusing on his heart; I've been working on him for a while now, and we'll continue working for a while yet. But the prognosis is very good, and with some diligence, he'll be a whole new man."

"A whole new man," Jack repeats. "You saved the body, too?"

"Well," Angela says; her smile grows tight. "Not so much. A lot of it is experimental, and not all of his cells will survive the process. If enough fail, we lose a fair amount of tissue, but we're doing the best we can for now. Someday, we will perfect the technology we're applying and will be able to apply it much faster. Perhaps even at the site of the incident!"

"Bet you'll do that fast, with Overwatch backing you," Gabriel says.

"I certainly hope so," she says.

"And what does he think of this?" Jack asks. "The patient, that is."

"Well, there's only so much I can disclose," Angela replies. "But he's been in an induced coma since the accident. We are hoping that by time we are ready to awaken him and put him into therapy, his would-be murderer will be brought to justice, and he can heal."

"They catch the guy?"

"Last I heard, no," Angela says. "But time will tell."

"That's pretty great, though," Jack says. "Imagine if someday that were some sort of outpatient procedure. See body, apply nanotechnology, and they reassemble themselves on the spot. No more casualties in war, no more murder victims, none of it. Just get back up and keep going."

Gabriel shakes his head.

"Just because you can bring them back doesn't mean they never died," he says. "Sounds pretty traumatic either way. Some people lose their shit from _near_ death experiences, let alone actually getting decapitated. How do you get consent from a dead person?"

"Innocent people get to live, Gabe," Jack says.

"And it means people never have to see their loved ones go before their time," Angela adds, but she feels a little string of tension when he meets her eyes. Gabriel sits back in his seat, his knees pushing forward, one right between Angela's. He doesn't seem to notice. He just shakes his head.

"By all means, see how good your tech gets," he says, finally. "I sure as hell don't want to die, but I'd rather that than be an Omnic."

"My patient is not an Omnic," Angela replies. "In fact, I don't think anyone at this table is any less human for the revolutionary medicine that we've undergone. He's still human, just as you are."

"Yeah," Gabriel says, dismissively, and Angela waits for him to continue, but he doesn't say more. He looks at his drink and swills it around a little, rattling the ice. 

"Alright," Jack interjects He slides to his feet. "Enough of that topic. Does the good doctor dance?"

"You ask her that every damn time," Gabriel replies, smoother again. He sets his glass down, and he shifts in his seat in a way that makes his shirt ride up to show an inch of skin above the top of his jeans. 

Jack looms over the table, smiling in a way that makes him look a little smug.

"So let's dance."

"Not tonight," Angela says. Though she'd like to let the two of them sweep her away once more and into the sea of bodies slowly filling up the dance floor, responsibility moves her more, as does the soreness in her feet. "Surgery was long!"

"Well, I was on a plane for hours and then I waited around for you, so I'm going to dance," Gabriel decides.

"Go on, then," Angela says. She smiles and leans her cheek on her hand. "It's just as much fun to watch."

"Hah," Jack snorts, but he picks at Gabriel's shirt to beckon him to follow, and off they go. 

The crowd parts for their broad shoulders, and Angela watches eyes turn briefly as they pass. It's just dark enough that their features are obscured, especially when the laser light effects scatter little dots over their faces in sniper red and bright green. Jack slips his hand in Gabe's and pulls him right into a steady groove. They're obvious Americans amongst a crowd of consummate Swiss, but neither seems to mind too much. Their thighs brush, Jack sliding playfully up on Gabe's knee. Gabe's hands slip to Jack's waist.

Angela chews on the ice in her otherwise-empty glass, and though she's sure anyone could tirelessly appreciate the sight of those two slackening their limbs on the dance floor, she looks down at her phone. There's a message from one of her assistants, updating her on the patient's condition. It's not good; his body is already rejecting the nanotechnology, a thousand tiny pacemakers screaming as they are pushed away from dying flesh. 

Almost a whole day of surgery for nothing, she realizes. And what to blame? The human body for not readily accepting the foreign? The limitations of one team, trapped in a towering lab, one small department in an organization that often has its priorities elsewhere? Her own error in miscalculation, in either design or method?

She scrubs her bangs out of her face and steps away from the table, and a call comes in as she is already making her way to the patio door. It's a little chilly outside, but she tucks herself against the wall to talk. More updates: they won't be able to salvage his heart; it's failing so fast, the flesh simply melting away. _Can you come back now?_ She's over an hour away; they must proceed to the secondary plan and put the temporary mechanical heart back in long before she'll even get close. It's still good, yes? _Yes._ Good. The patient will still have a heart someday, but it won't be his own.

Hmm.

Angela closes the call.

When she gets back inside, Gabe and Jack have both returned to the table. Jack sits in Angela's seat, his back against the mirrored wall, and Gabe stands over him. Their handsome faces are close to speak over the worsening volume of the club. Inaudible, they exchange a few words, and then Gabe catches Jack in a kiss. Angela watches Jack's nose crinkle when they break apart and Gabe says _something,_ sober and serious. Jack nods, and they trade a few more words before kissing again, briefer this time.  She doesn't interrupt what must be a very nice scrap of privacy in their hectic lives, but Jack sees her watching and he hails her with a hand.

"Everything okay?" he asks.

"Some trouble with the procedure," she says.

"Do you have to go?" Jack asks.

"We can drive you back," Gabriel adds. He picks up his glass and drains it.

Jack looks at her with concern, though his other hand is still absently running along Gabriel's forearm. Gabe looks at her too, frowning. Angela hesitates, and she feels that maybe she _should_ go, but she trusts her team can handle it. In the grand scheme of things, it's only a minor setback. They can still save the other organs.

"No, no," Angela decides. "They don't need me, they were just keeping me abreast of the situation."

"Alright, then," Gabe says. "You want to get out of here in general?"

"Sure," Angela says. "Where to?"

"If I say our rooms back at the HQ, you're just going to go back to work anyway," Jack says. "So I don't know. Coffee shop? A quieter bar?"

"Neither," Angela says. "How about my place?"

"Would we be imposing?" Gabe asks.

"Of course not. It's not too far from here."

"Sounds good, then."

Jack finishes his drink, too, and he thoughtlessly runs his tongue over his lower lip. Angela watches the entire gesture. She notices Gabriel watching, too, but he looks away when he notices her in turn. She feels bolder for it, especially with the thought that they'd be on her ground.

"So," Angela says, smiling. "Do I finally get to take a look at your enhancements?"

"Only if we get to see yours," Jack replies, coyly. He throws one arm around her and the other around Gabriel.

Angela laughs and leads them out through the crowds.

 

* * *

 

"What a gentleman," Angela comments as Gabe hustles a little quicker to get the car door for her. "Thank you."

"I'm going to sit with you in the back," Gabe says over the edge of the door, and he closes it behind her.

"You trying to make me feel like a cab driver?" Jack shoots from the driver's seat, eyes following Gabriel as he rounds the car. He starts the car and bumps up the controls for heat, the dials glowing blue on the windshield as he adjusts.

"You _like_ driving," Gabe says, as he opens the passenger side door. He gets in, settling in broad and heavy, and he pats the middle seat. "C'mere. Keep me warm in this miserable cold weather."

Angela laughs and obliges him by sliding over. The middle seat is narrower and there isn't much knee room, but who is she to deny this poor man, unused to these winters? Gabe snakes a hand across her, and hand almost brushing her breast, but instead he just grabs her seatbelt. He does it up for her, leant right in her space. His aftershave is heady, and his nose comes within an inch of grazing her cheek. She thinks to kiss it, but she doesn't, and when he pulls away, he lays an arm around the back of her seat.

"Safety first," he says.

"Full service," Angela laughs, instead. 

Gabe chuckles.

"Real cozy," Jack says, glancing at them through the rearview mirror. Angela smiles at him, deliberately leaning into Gabe a little more.

"There's space for you," Gabe croons.

"Yeah, and we'll just idle in this parking lot forever. Address in my communicator still good, Ang?" Jack asks. He pulls the car away anyway, leaning forward in his seat to see around a corner.

"Should be."

Jack hums.

"I'm surprised you world-famous, glory-draped soldiers don't have a personal driver," Angela comments. "Should I be negotiating something like that into my contract?"

"You could try," Gabriel says. "I recommend just taking more money, though. There are better things to spend a hundred grand on than paying some guy to follow you around the world to drive a car."

(Fully-automated cars had been a nice dream, for a little while, but it hadn't turned out too well once the Omnic War had begun. Maybe in another decade or two they'll be used for more than just emergencies, when things have smoothed over more. Settled.)

"What do you spend that hundred grand on?" Angela asks.

"Lakers tickets." 

"American football?"

Gabriel gives her a thoroughly unimpressed look. Jack laughs; maybe she's in for it now.

" _Basketball,_ " he corrects her, sharply, but he still sounds proud of himself. "Courtside tickets for the season."

"They're that much?" Angela asks. She can't imagine. She doesn't spend nearly that much in even a year, too busy with work to spend money for fun.

"I would pay twice that much if I had to," Gabriel declares.

"Yeah, and like I said when you bought them, you'll miss three quarters of the home games anyway," Jack says. "You'll be sprinting through a war zone, listening for the updates on your communicator."

 "And as _I_ said before, I don't _care_ , Jacky," he says. "I'll see enough of them, so it'll be worth it."

Angela leans her head against Gabe's shoulder and he casually drapes his arm around her. His thumb idly drags across her collarbone, his fingers close to the swell of her breast. His attention, however, is on bickering about money with Jack, their deep voices trading back and forth, punctuated by laughter. 

"Here's something to put in your contract," Gabriel chuckles suddenly, nudging her. He drops his voice low, conspiring: "Whatever you want. _Free rein._ "

Gabe pulls her into a kiss while Jack watches through the rearview mirror.

Free rein. She's never had much of that.

 

* * *

 

She peels herself from bed and walks barefoot from her room to the kitchen, shrouded in her housecoat, the sash tied so loosely the neckline drops to show the length of her sternum. Jack keeps rummaging even when she tells him _good morning,_ opening one cupboard after another, unsatisfied with each.

"What do you even eat for breakfast?" Jack asks, giving her a glance that roves up and down. "Just müeseli every day? They import real bacon to the HQ, you know. You don't have to live like this, Angela."

"Could you please deign to wear clothes when you are in my kitchen?" Angela answers, and she shoos him away, as if such a gesture could ever sway a man like him. "It's not hygenic."

Jack laughs and steps back.

"I didn't know we were doing surgery in here," he says.

She feels the tug of a smile on her lips anyway. Jack hovers in her space, still bed-warm, and he reaches to tuck her bangs behind her ear. He knows he's cute, and it endears her.

"What are you looking for?"

"Anything, but I'd kill for an everything bagel," he says.

"You're out of luck on that one," she says. She doesn't even know what an 'everything' bagel is, and despite him walking around her kitchen with all the gifts of the SEP on display, she feels amused. "Go shower, I'll make a proper breakfast for us all and then we can drive back into the headquarters."

Jack laughs –– probably at the ludicrous suggestion that Gabe will let them drive into work _together_ instead of stubbornly taking the train –– but he wanders away. Angela watches his bare bottom as he goes, and with a lightness in her heart, she sets about making breakfast, like a good host. She assembles a plate of gipfeli croissants and cheeses and cold cuts, and makes some soft boiled eggs that she guillotines open and dusts liberally with aromat. The shower is a steady hum in the background, a noise foreign to her from the kitchen, and Gabe's voice floats up from the bedroom, talking on his cell.

She feels good. Light. She has the thought that if Jack and Gabriel are both stationed here permanently, and she's with Overwatch proper, they can have nights like this all the time. Increased funding will strengthen her lab. She'll have a broader circle of friends. Maybe there will be fewer late nights, more socializing. More trips outside the lab. She'll see the world. 

"Are we going to be late?" she calls, when she hears Jack open the bathroom door and triapse back into the bedroom. She doesn't get a response save for Gabe grumbling as the mattress creaks, and his complaints that Jack is still wet. There's some joking around, tussling. 

Her internal clock says it's almost seven. Well, she supposes, they'll just have to be a little late, if they're going to take their sweet time.

Gabe pokes his head out a moment later. He looks serious until he sees breakfast laid out, and then for the slightest moment, he rubs his lips together with relish.

"Oh," he says, low, sweet. "That looks good, Doc… but I think we'll have to take it to go."

"Not to worry," she says. "We'll have plenty more opportunities."

Angela picks up a croissant and takes a bite behind her hand. He smiles a little, and he leans one hand against the countertop, his weight squared. His briefs are slung low on his hips, but at least he has the good sense to wear clothes in her kitchen.

"Change the world and have a good time," she says.

"Yeah," he says, leaning into her space. "We will. _You_ will."

Angela smiles and bows her face. Gabriel chuckles, somewhere at the back of his throat, and he reaches to cup her cheek and tilt her face back towards him. He leans so close that he bumps the tip of his nose against hers.

"Welcome to Overwatch," he says.

And that, of course, is just the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god!! I made it!! 70k words in forty days, hundreds of Google searches for research on a hundred topics, a handful of characters I'd never written before, and a handful of characters I've completely falling in love with writing. I didn't set out on this fic planning to do a speed run, but it feels fantastic to prove to myself that I can. (I love talking about process, so if you have any questions at all about anything, no matter how trivial, I'm happy to ramble.)
> 
> To everyone reading this: thank you so much. I have never focused so singularly on a single work in a long time, and I appreciate every single comment, kudos, [tumblr](http://quicksparrows.tumblr.com) message, and ask I've gotten along the way. Thank you so much for your kindness and excitement. 
> 
> It's been so fun and I think I'm going to try doing this again sometime after I get some other things finished up and get some short stories done. 
> 
> Happy holidays and see you all again soon!
> 
> \- Jenn


End file.
